Crossroads of Destiny
by ChaosKin640
Summary: The opening moves in a rapidly escalating war are made, drawing the gathered players down a path of desolate destruction. For Jacob Mehrandish and his fellow members of the SWA, it will ultimately prove the greatest test of their strength and resolve.
1. Prologue: The Evolving Battlefield

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_The following is a work of fiction. All names, places, characters and events are either the product of the author's imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is purely coincidental. The Gunslinger Girl© anime and manga series, as well as all associated characters therein are the property Yu Aida, unless specifically noted otherwise._

_All members of the New Brookendis council are the property of the author, ChaosKin640. Xaio'Xyn Reaper, Jade and Emily are the property of the author. Jacob, Samantha, Zachariah, Sophia and Melanie Mehrandish are all the property of the author. Costante and Nina Barone, Enzo and Lucretia Desimone are all the property of the author._

_Avise and Agapita Mancini are the property of their creator, Robert Frazer._

_Michele and Kara Pagani are the property of their creator, Kiskaloo._

_Elio, Marina and Marissa Alboreto are the property of their creator, Professor Voodoo._

_Alpha is the property of his creator, Boomer_Gonz._

_Brain and Allison McDonnell are the property of their creator, MP5._

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Prologue: The Evolving Battlefield

Quinn strode through the alabaster halls of the Spire, her mind awhirl with worry. She could feel her stomach churning as nervousness clouded her thoughts. The fact that she no longer possessed a real stomach was slight incongruous, yet that fact failed to stop her mind from generating the perceived sensations of a nauseous stomach.

The strained, almost frantic look of worry on the messenger's face had revealed more about the message's importance than the message itself. The fact that the council had deemed it necessary to send a member of the elite Death's Legion to ensure the message's safe delivery spoke volumes to her.

Despite her inner turmoil, Quinn managed, albeit with no small amount of difficulty, to maintain a mask of calm serenity, as befitted her station within New Brookendis' ruling body. She nodded to those she passed, offering a smile and some brief words of greetings to those few she recognized. To her great reluctance, almost everyone she strode by recognized the hurry she was in, and made no move to impede her progress. Of course, that could equally have been due to the fact that she had rushed straight from the gate chambers, and was still outfitted in her blood-spattered armour.

This high up within the Spire, most of the grand statues and sweeping murals that were common in the more public areas had given way to simple, bare stretches of pale, gold and blue veined marble corridors. The few doors set between the towering pillars that supported the curving barrel ceiling more than thirty feet overhead were of plain mahogany. These parts of the Spire were devoted exclusively to administrative offices, and were only ever seen by the upper-echelon staff responsible for running the city. As such, there was little need to impress.

The doors leading into the council chamber itself were, of course, the sole exception to this. The doors, just coming into Quinn's view as she rounded the final curve in the hallway, towered over her. Rising some fifteen feet at the peak of their arched form, the doors were wide enough to allow half-a-dozen men to pass through comfortably. Forged of solid aulorium, and gilded in pure gold, the doors bore the six interlocked rings sigil of the High Council.

Quinn had never understood the necessity of such absurdly massive doors. After all, the council chamber was hallowed ground, forbidden for any but the council members themselves to enter; and there was hardly any need for them to impress each other.

The guards flanking the threshold, on the other hand, Quinn was perfectly comfortable with. She allowed herself a thin smile as she studied the pair.

Their heads rising almost level with the highest point of the doors, the twin guardians stared down at her impassively as she approached. Bearing the basic physical forms of a centaur, both were fully armoured from head to toe. No, that wasn't entirely accurate. The pair weren't truly armoured, they _were_ armour. Steel War Golems, the identical pair were composed almost entirely of solid aulorium armour plating. Their equine lower torsos allowed them to maintain perfect balance and stability, and as she had seen often enough on the battlefield, a terrifyingly deceptive capacity for speed, as well.

The golems' lower set of arms were folded loosely across their chests, gauntleted hands resting on the hilts of huge, curving tulwars. The blades were almost nine feet in length, and could cleave through the armoured hide and bone of a balroc demon without the slightest difficulty. Their upper arms gripped the shafts of towering lances, each pole almost as thick around as Quinn's head. The lances' four-foot long spearheads, also forged of solid aulorium, rose almost to the ceiling.

Quinn had witnessed demon hordes numbering in the millions break and flee in the face of a concentrated charge of steel war golems. Frankly, Quinn didn't blame them. Not even she would be eager to stare down several thousand of the hulking goliaths. Then again, the more she dwelled on it, the idea of pitting her own strength and skill against a war golem charge sounded rather appealing. It would certainly prove an excellent challenge. She could almost feel her blood surging in response to the thought. Of course, she didn't have real blood anymore either, but that was beside the point.

Marching resolutely up to the doors, Quinn didn't bother to so much as slow her pace. The golems reacted accordingly, and each swept one colossal arm out, twisting their upper torsos slightly to push open the doors leading into the council chamber. A brilliant white light exploded outward from the crack, flooding the corridor and sending the faintest of rumbling vibrations through the ground. The overwhelming intensity of the light would have blinded her had she not known it was coming and shifted the spectrum filtering of her artificial eyes accordingly to negate it.

Passing through the threshold, she felt a faint tingle run through her body, the intricate spell-weave of the protective ward scanning and evaluating her presence. Almost immediately the blinding light faded, and she was treated to tell-tale twisting, pulling sensation of having stepped through a rift-gate. Existing in an isolated pocket universe, the council chamber was linked to the mortal plane solely through the connecting gateway, activated by the light-shield. Had she been deemed an intruder, and assuming she had survived the ward's defensive reactions, the doorway would only have let out into a sealed, empty vacuole-realm, trapping the unfortunate interloper for eternity.

Blinking in the suddenly dim light, Quinn shifted her eyes back into the white-light spectrum, adjusting her retinal structure to compensate for the significantly reduced illumination.

"Well, how good of you to _finally_ deign to join us, Quinn. We've only been waiting for you for an _hour_. It certainly isn't as if we all have other important matters to attend to, to be able to sit around waiting for you to show up." Looking across the relatively small, austere room, Quinn locked eyes with the man who had spoken. His ebony-black skin seemed to soak up the muted light provided by the dozen glow-orbs spaced evenly around the circular wall. His head was completely shaved, with the exception of a braided top-knot that hung between his shoulder-blades, falling almost to his waist. He wore a flowing robe of deep indigo and crimson, cut in a reserved yet elegant style that served to accentuate his lean, muscular build.

"My sincere apologies Damien," Quinn responded, with only the faintest hint of an acerbic bite in her voice, "for my keeping you from your pressing duties between Tiamat's thighs."

Damien surged to his feet, fists slamming down upon the table with enough force to crack the ancient wood. His face twisted into a terrifying visage of divine rage, his deep, rumbling voice booming through the chamber with deafening force. "How dare you? I should rend that synthetic body of yours apart, one cell at a time for that!"

"Oh shut up and sit down, Damien," The man who had spoken, Daniel, lounged casually in his seat, thick arms folded loosely across his massive barrel-chest, one booted foot propped up on the table.

"Don't mind him, Quinn; he's just being pissy because he thinks we're wasting our time."

"We _are_ wasting our time!" Damien retorted sharply. "I see no evidence that this…threat, is anything more than exaggerated grand-standing by an embittered field agent looking to score favours with us."

"I wouldn't call the confirmed presence of three _maras_ "grand-standing" Damien. Reaper wouldn't waste his own time sending an infiltration team if he wasn't interested in something on that world." Kevin, seated to Daniel's left, spoke with a measured calm that he used when trying to diffuse a potentially volatile situation. "In either case," he went on as Quinn took her seat to Kevin's right, "whether this is a ploy to draw our focus or not, the threat is real enough to warrant this meeting."

"That is something yet to be determined. I, for one, am inclined to agree with Damien, and am not convinced." Nareela gazed impassively between the gathered council members, her large, ice-blue eyes swirling with inner energies.

"Which is why we have come together to discuss the matter," Raphesiel, seated opposite Damien and dressed in near-identical fashion, stated simply. Where Damien's robes were of a dark blues and sinister reds, Raphesiel's garments were woven of pale creams and soft golden-yellows.

Hair the colour of spun gold tumbled about his shoulders, cascading down his back in a shimmering wave. His clean-shaven face seemed sculpted from the same alabaster marble as the corridors of the Spire, each line and curved plane an example of physical perfection given living flesh. Where Damien seemed to draw in and devour all nearby light, Raphesiel appeared to radiate a soothing brilliance.

"Perhaps we should begin by reviewing Lucas' report, shall we?" At Raphesiel's words, the center of the table began to emit a dull glow, and long strings of words materialised in the air before them all. Quinn scanned the highlights quickly, confirming what she had suspected.

She'd known that Lucas Raveen was one of dozens of field agents sent to oversee potential target sites for a demonic incursion. He had been stationed on this particular word for almost two years now.

As the report was scrolling through, Raphesiel continued on in his analysis. "According to Lucas, he has strong reason to believe Reaper is setting himself up to make a play for control of this world."

Daniel straightened up in his seat, leaning his elbows against the table. "Why? What's on this world that would interest Reaper? From what I can see, the planet's Magick Resonance rating is almost non-existent. He can't be planning to open a Hell Gate and establish a foothold there, can he? Without a viable anchor point, it would take a ridiculous amount of power on his end to maintain the connection."

"That's true, which leads me to believe Reaper's interest lies in recruiting, rather then invasion," Kevin replied, selecting a particular section of the flowing words, and focusing on them. "From what Lucas reports here, this world is on the verge of developing advanced cybernetic technologies. My guess…"

Before Kevin could continue, Damien barked out a harsh, cynical laugh, cutting him off. "Advanced cybernetic technologies? That _is_ a joke, right? By the Abyss, these people are playing with primitive carbon-fibre weaves and reinforced plastics. These…cybernetics are little more than binary-input robots. Common _children's_ toys utilize technology that is centuries ahead of what he is claiming these people have developed. Am I seriously supposed to believe that _this_ is the grand threat looming over us?"

For the first time, the man sitting to Quinn's other side spoke up, his voice measured and calm, though Quinn could feel the faint quivering in her mind that spoke of his tightly controlled frustration. "It's not the technology itself that Reaper is after, Damien, but the brains behind the technology. If Reaper is able to recruit the man responsible for inventing this technology, than it is entirely possible that, with the resources at his disposal, Reaper could commission the invention of cybernetic advances that _are_ of a more equal footing to what we have available. Even the slimmest chance of Reaper getting his hands on nano-cellular technology is a threat we _cannot_ afford to overlook."

"Spare me your dramatics, Alex. Reaper could develop the technology on his own faster than it would take some bumbling monkey to figure it out."

"And if he starts gathering several dozen of these "bumbling monkeys" to work in collaboration?" Kevin interjected on the conversation before it could grow out of hand. "According to this information, less than four years prior to the advent of these new cybernetics, the most advanced comparable technology was a simple computer-controlled robotic arm equipped with a pressure sensitive clamp in place of a hand that could pick up small objects.

"Four years later and all of a sudden they're using micro-polymer synthetic muscle tissues and laying the groundwork for rudimentary bio-neural interfaces. That's an almost unfathomably rapid leap forward in technological advancement.

"With enough of these genius minds working together, Reaper won't even need to take advantage of the standard time-differential inherent to Hell; he can _certainly _afford to spend the extra millennium needed to play catch-up.

"Alex is right; we can't afford to ignore this."

"Perhaps," Nareela said, long thin fingers stroking her curved, dangling facial antennae. "But there are tens, even hundreds of thousands of such worlds with the potential for advanced cybernetics. We don't have the resources to secure all of them."

Alex shook his head, pinching his temples between the thumb and forefinger of one hand. "We aren't proposing to. This world's technology level is still low enough that we can take the time for a more methodical infiltration operation. And so far it's the only one we've received confirmation of demonic presence. In regards to those other worlds, if it comes down to it, we are always left with the option of a quarantine purge." His last statement drew everyone's attention; not for the severity of the proposal, but the fact that Alex had openly proposed it.

After several moments of stunned silence, Kevin hazarded to speak carefully. "And you would support a full planetary purge?"

Alex sighed, nodding with obvious reluctance. "If it meant keeping Reaper away from nano-cellular technology, then yes, I would support a purge of any infected world."

Several more drawn-out moments of silence ensued, before Raphesiel finally pulled everyone's attention back. "Very well. In that case, I believe that our only logical course is to begin an immediate infiltration, for the purposes of evaluating the precise level of the threat posed. Above all else though, this scientist, a doctor," Raphesiel briefly scanned the original report for the relevant name. "Doctor Bianchi must be kept under close observation. We must determine whether there is any chance he will accept any offer made on behalf of Reaper."

"Isn't that part of what Lucas' job down there is?" Daniel asked, genuinely confused.

"It is, but his cover was compromised during the course of his identifying the _maras_. Reaper will know he's there by now, and Lucas needs to be extracted before he's killed. Which means we need someone to take his place."

Silence descended on the group once more. After a short time, Quinn suddenly realized that every other member of the council was peering intently at _her_.

"Oh shit, you're not serious are you?"

Raphesiel answered her softly, his voice almost apologetic in tone. "You're the only one qualified for this operation, Quinn. It has to be you."

"How am I the only one qualified? I'm a soldier, not a spy." Raphesiel pulled up a different section of the field report, detailing the specifics of Dr. Bianchi's work on developing the advanced cybernetics that had drawn Reaper's attention.

Quinn sat in stunned silence, her mouth hanging open as she read through Lucas' summary of the location and Dr. Bianchi's work. She whispered a low benediction to the ancestral spirits, unable to believe what she was seeing. "_That's_ where you want me inserted? Are you out of your minds?"

"Your synthetic body is the only plausible means of pulling off a successful infiltration."

"And what happens when Bianchi and his team start cutting out my "organs" and replacing my limbs with their cybernetic prostheses? That's a lot of Omega Cells to leave lying around. The whole point of this is to prevent Reaper acquiring technology comparable to our Omega Cells and now you want to have human scientists tossing entire organs' worth of them in the trash for any demon agent to pick through and take back to Hell?"

"Your nano-cellular tissue can be safe-coded to self-destruct upon detachment from the core body, can't they? All it would take is for you to pre-program a set time delay before they vaporize themselves."

"So send someone else to infiltrate some other section of the Agency. Why do I have to go under cover as an actual operative?"

To her surprise, it was Alex who answered her, hand waving over the control interface in front of him to shift the display to the relevant information. "The agency's employee screening process is too strict for us to risk trying to slip someone in. The very nature of the agency's combat operatives invalidates the need for any kind of strenuous security-checks.

"And as an operative, you will be able to maintain a much closer surveillance level on Bianchi and his team."

Quinn knew there was no point arguing. They were right. She _was_ uniquely qualified for the mission. With a sense of resigned futility, she nodded, accepting the burden. "Alright, I'll do it."

The council meeting broke up quickly after that, with each member making their way out of the chamber at their own pace. Damien was the first to leave, practically racing towards the door in his rush to be on his way. Kevin and Daniel left together at a much more causal pace, their heads close together in quiet conversation. Nareela glided out of the room close on their heels, her stately poise and grace granting her the appearance of a queen striding elegantly through her royal court.

Raphesiel spared a few moments to offer Quinn a sympathetic hand to her shoulder, allowing some of his soothing energy to seep into her. Then he too left, leaving Quinn and Alex alone together.

"I'm sorry we had to spring that on you like that."

Quinn shook her head slightly, dismissing his worry. "It's okay. I understand the urgency. I know we can't always have the time we want to pick apart every little detail of an operation until everyone is satisfied with every single aspect. I'll deal with it."

"Still, I would have preferred to tell you in private." He leaned in close, wrapping one arm around her shoulders.

She smiled at the tender gesture, reaching up to grasp his hand in her own. "I know, Alex. But don't worry about me; I'm a big girl, remember? And I'm a soldier; I know how to follow orders when necessary.

"I just wish we didn't have to resort to these shadow-games. I hate _maras._ They slip into a person's dreams and dig in their claws, taking complete control of your mind. It's nearly impossible to tell who might be possessed by one. I don't like that kind of fighting. Stick me in the front lines on any battlefield and I'll carve a path through anything and anyone in front of me, but this…" she trailed off, letting her head sink onto Alex's shoulder. She could feel his sympathy and understanding washing through her mind, and she drew some small measure of strength from it.

"I don't like it either, Quinn. I'm a soldier at heart too, if you recall? But it's been centuries since we could afford to engage Reaper in a direct conflict. The powers we each hold at our disposal would cause an unacceptable level of irreparable collateral damage from the first clash."

"I know that. I _was_ there at the battle of Ohmarelle, you know. By the end of that war there wasn't even enough debris left of the galaxy to rebuild so much as a single star."

"Yeah, Ohmarelle was definitely a loss for _everyone_ involved, which is why we have to do things this way now. It's regrettable, but war, like everything else in life, is always evolving. This is simply the new face of the modern battlefield."

They sat in silence for a time, each savouring the feel of the other's presence. Quinn closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, breathing in Alex's unique sent. He wasn't wearing any cologne, much to her delight. She hated the way it masked his own, natural odours. It was comforting, familiar smell.

She felt him plant a tender kiss to the top of her head, eliciting a broad grin from her. "What do you say we swing home before we get things under way? We've probably got a couple of hours before we really have to get you ready for insertion."

"Oh, don't tempt me," Quinn purred. "Unfortunately, seeing as how I'll probably be in deep cover for at least three, maybe even five years, I have my doubts a couple of hours will be enough time to say good-bye." Alex chuckled, his whole body shaking beside her.

"Good point. Although, with the mind-wipe you're going to need to run on yourself, technically you won't even realize that any time has passed at all."

"Christ, don't remind me. I'm freaked out enough as it is about having to dump all of my memories. Are you sure it's even necessary?"

"Unfortunately, yes. Any subconscious knowledge of who and what you are could put you and your mission at risk. All it would take is one instinctual trigger-command being sent to your neural-net and all your code-locks would reverse themselves."

"I'd like to think I can control myself a _little_ better than that," she retorted, slightly put out by his doubts.

"And if you came face-to-face with one of Reaper's agents and you recognized it? You said it yourself Quinn: you're a soldier, not a spy. You have over seventy-thousand years of battle-hardened instincts ingrained into every fibre of your being. Can you honestly say that you would be able to resist the impulse to retaliate and attack if confronted by a demon?"

"Okay, okay, I get the point. But I still don't like the idea of walking around down there completely blind."

"Don't worry. I'll still be up here watching over you."

She twisted around to look into his eyes, seeing the simple sincerity in his face. "You will?"

"Absolutely." He replied without the slightest hesitation, his arm squeezing tighter around her shoulders. "I'll have my eyes and ears locked on you at all times."

She cooed softly in response, reaching up to brush one hand down the side of his face, her fingers curling in his close-cropped beard. The soft, tightly curling hairs were a rich chestnut brown, the dim light from the glow-orbs picking out the thin threads of red running through. "Aww, my guardian angel; whatever would I do without you?"

"Oh you'd have been dead long ago without me."

Quinn planted a fist in his ribs, feigning indignation. "You bastard! I'll have you know that I would have gotten on just fine without you. You, on the other hand, would be lying dead in the corner of that Terahkan prison cell if not for _me_."

Alex grinned down at her, his pale blue eyes sparkling mischievously. "Oh you think so, huh? Well _I'll_ have _you_ know that I was perfectly capable of escaping that dungeon on my own anytime I wanted."

Incredulous, Quinn folded her arms beneath her breasts, staring at him with one slim eyebrow slightly arched. "Really?"

"Yes really. You honestly think sticking the most powerful earth-mage alive in a dungeon carved out of solid _rock_ was going to be able to hold me?"

Quinn sighed, shaking her head in mock disappointment. "You're getting old, Alex; you're memory is fading on you. As I recall, you weren't exactly in full possession of your abilities at the time."

"Bah; details, details," Alex said, giving a derisive snort. "I'd have gotten out eventually. And look who's talking, calling _me_ old. You're two thousand years older than I am."

"Oh no, no, no; not anymore I'm not. Brand spanking new synthetic body, remember? I'm technically less than three thousand years old again." That drew a reflective frown from Alex, who pulled back slightly, one hand scratching at his chin the way he did when deep in thought.

"Ouch, that's right. Hmm, that's a little creepy, when you think about it. Our _children_ are technically older than you are, then.

"So what does that make me, your sugar-daddy or something?"

Quinn laughed at the sudden image that notion produced in her mind, and she twisted around to reach up, wrapping her arms around Alex's neck, hugging him close. "Sure, Alex, you're my big, strong sugar-daddy. But if you try to pimp me out to your friends, I'm going to have to start breaking bones."

"Duly noted," he chuckled in reply.

He bent his head forward then, his lips softly brushing against hers. She pressed herself tighter against him, his arms slipping tenderly around her waist. She mewled softly into his lips as he continued to kiss her with increasing force. He hands began to slide up her back, caressing her shoulders.

Realizing where they were, Quinn pulled back slightly, her face flushing faintly red in mild embarrassment. "This probably isn't the most appropriate place for us to start feeling each other up in, Alex."

Staring down at her, Alex gazed into her emerald eyes for a moment, not understanding what she meant. Then he broke out laughing, his head thrown back slightly to stare up at the grand, vaulted ceiling.

"Yeah, you're probably right. I can just imagine how Raphesiel would react if he found out."

"Not to mention Damien would no doubt throw a fit the likes of which had never been seen before."

"Yeah, out of jealousy, would be my guess. Which reminds me, what was with the Tiamat jibe?"

It was Quinn's turn then to look at him in confusion. "What? He _is_ bedding her, isn't he?"

"I have no idea. But seeing as she's an incarnation given life by Damien's power, I would assume that would make her technically an extension of Damien himself."

"So would that be considered sex, or masturbation?"

Alex sighed, wiping one hand down the length of his face. He leaned back in his chair gazing up into the shadowy depths of the ceiling, as if some piece of divine wisdom could be found hidden within. "I honestly don't know, and frankly I have no desire what-so-ever to find out, either." He turned back to look at her, capturing her gaze. "You're welcome to ask him yourself, if your curious."

She scoffed, rolling her eyes, exasperated. "Thanks, I think I'll pass if it's all the same to you. Being fried to a cinder in an explosive eruption of divine fury isn't on my planned list of things to do before I die."

The conversation hit a natural lull then, both realizing that the time was upon them. They rose from their seats together, striding to the twin, towering doors. At the edge of the threshold, they both stopped, turning towards each other. Impulsively, Alex reached out and hugged Quinn tight to his chest, one hand stroking her shoulder-length, blood-red hair. "You keep yourself safe Quinn, you hear me." All trace of humour in his voice was gone. "I almost lost you once; I won't go through that again." Quinn reached around to grip him tight, hugging him as fiercely as he held her.

Far too soon for Quinn's liking, they separated and, spending one last, lingering moment gazing into each other's eyes, stepped back through the doorway, on their way to war.


	2. Chapter 01: Requiem for the Fallen

Chapter 01: Requiem for the Fallen

Laid out prone in the deeper shadow cast by a low rocky hillock, Jacob Mehrandish gave a subtle twist to the telescopic viewfinder of his night-vision headset, pulling the image before him into sharper focus. Peering over the top of the hill, which was more of a small rippling fold in the surrounding gently-sloped field than a proper hill, he could make out four men patrolling the perimeter of the compound spread out before him, each man carrying an AK47 gripped tightly in their hands. They were all dressed in jeans and slightly bulky coats. Each breath sent small puffs of steam curling into the air; a steady, late-October breeze carrying them swiftly away.

Behind the men, perhaps fifty feet deeper into the compound, Jacob could make out the plain, utilitarian walls of a pre-fab warehouse. From his low vantage point, he couldn't see up onto the warehouse's flat roof, but surveillance photos taken by a borrowed American satellite had shown there was an access port leading from inside, which augured well for there being additional guards stationed there.

To his right, roughly fifty feet away from where the four men were patrolling, stood one of the five watch-towers that ringed the compound. Jacob could just make out the profile of the man stationed up there, only the top of his head visible over the viewing platform's side-walls. He could also just make out the shape of a 1000-watt searchlight mounted the side of the tower, positioned so that it could track any movement in or outside the compound. The light, along with the four other lights mounted on the other towers, were all shut off, earning a grudging nod of respect from Jacob. It seemed that whoever Padania had in charge here had a half decent idea of what they were doing.

The compound, a large scale training camp for new Padania recruits, was located in the lower foothills of the Italian Alps. The terrain, while certainly not what Jacob would consider rugged, was still hilly enough to provide ample blind-spots for any searchlight. In those conditions, relying on light to pick out any approaching intruders only served to hamper your own men, as the light destroyed their night-vision, hampering their ability to see into the shadows beyond the edge of illumination.

A quiet shifting at his side made him turn, and he placed a reassuring hand on his partner, Sophia's shoulder. She settled down immediately, drawing comfort from the simple contact. She flicked a glance over at him, her sky-blue eyes appearing as twin glowing orbs in his scope. She offered a quick smile, before turning her gaze back towards the compound. A heavy black wool toboggan cap was pulled down low on her head. Sophia's light-brown hair, normally falling to the middle of her back, was wound up into a tight, simple bun and stuffed under the cap to keep it out of the way. She wore a thick black wool sleeveless sweater overtop a simple black cotton shirt that she left untucked into the hem of a dark grey, knee-length skirt. A modified ammo-belt was cinched around her waist; the first two pockets on either side carrying spare clips for her Beretta SCP 70/90 carbine. The remaining four pouches each held a half-kilo C4 demolition charge. Her long, lean legs were clad in heavy black leggings, with surprisingly stylish black tactical boots completing her ensemble.

Jacob allowed himself a wry shake of his head at the incongruity of her outfit. _Leave it to Kara to track down a pair of combat boots that could be described as stylish,_ he thought wryly to himself. He would have to remember to half a little talk with Pagani after the mission. Kara was starting to become a bad influence.

There was a faint crackle as the radio line went live, and moments later, Jacob heard Jean Croce's flat, hard-edged voice over the comm-line. "All teams stand ready. Prepare to move in T -30 seconds."

Bracing himself, he flexed the muscles in his arms and legs to help restore proper blood-flow. Working his shoulders slightly to loosen up any kinks, he tightened his grip on his Colt C8SFW, steeling himself for what was about to happen.

Ticking off the seconds in his mind, Jacob began pushing himself up scant milliseconds before Jean's voice cracked across the radio, signalling all teams to begin moving in.

Scrambling up into a low crouch, Jacob sprinted forward, his C8 held tight to the hollow of his shoulder, barrel up and ready to fire. He trained his sights on the second of the four men making their way casually along the compound's perimeter. It was a good four hundred feet to the chain-link fence that encircled the main compound, and Jacob maintained an even, steady pace. Within the first few steps, Sophia had pulled ahead, her limber body flowing over the contours of the land as if she was on flat, level ground. Though he couldn't see her face, Jacob knew that Sophia's eyes, normally glittering with a natural exuberance, would have gone cold and hard; all emotion leached from them as her mind snapped into the deadly serious "combat mode" that was a trademark of all her "sisters".

Scanning the area, Jacob could just see one corner of the main building, an old converted villa around which the rest of the Padania training compound had been built. Several lights were still on up on the second and third floors, casting tiny pools of illumination upon the ground below. Most of the villa was obscured behind three long, pre-fab bunkhouses, each one capable of housing two dozen men. The door to the nearest bunkhouse was open, a dim light visible within evidence that some of the men within were still awake. That could pose a problem for Kara, Chiara and Petra, who would be moving in from the north to secure the bunkhouses, while Triela and Henrietta would be covering the main villa from the north and west respectively.

Jacob keyed his radio, whispering softly, his voice pitched to keep it from carrying in the chilly air. "This is echo team, I got visual on a light coming from the third bunkhouse; be aware there may be hostiles on alert within, copy?"

Moments later his warning was answered, the sound of Michele Pagani's smooth, cultured accent barely audible in Jacob's earpiece. "This is Charlie team; copy that echo, thanks for the heads-up."

Shortly after, a faint, whistling whine reached Jacob's ears, and he pulled his attention back to his own target of focus. He saw two of the men stop and turn as the whistling grew in intensity. One of the men made to move off and investigate. Seconds later, the chilly air was rent by a resounding blast, the darkness shattered by a roiling ball of flame that leapt into the sky, accompanied by a cascading shower of sparks. Instantly, all lights in the villa and bunkhouse winked out, courtesy of a precision-planted mortar round finding its mark on the compound's diesel generator.

Frantic shouting began to fill air as Padania gunmen scrambled to react to the sudden attack. One of the four men ahead of Jacob ran off to help douse the numerous small fires that had sprung up all around the vicinity of the blasted-out generator. The remaining three men began to fan out along the perimeter, rifles aimed out, into the encroaching shadows beyond the fence.

Tipping up the barrel of his C8, Jacob squeezed the trigger of the attached H&K AG-C grenade launcher. There was a sharp _click_ as the grenade was launched, arcing smoothly over the top of the perimeter fence to land squarely between the furthest two gunmen. There was a brief flash followed immediately by a resounding _boom_ as the grenade detonated. Deadly shrapnel lanced out in all directions, cutting down both men. Blood sprayed across the ground as their legs and torsos were shredded.

Slightly ahead of him, Sophia let out a quick three-round burst salvo from her Beretta, all three shots finding their mark in the final gunman. The man let out a pained yell, garbled slightly by the blood and fluid quickly flooding his lungs and chest cavity.

Sprinting forward the final fifty feet to the perimeter fence, Jacob began a methodical sweeping scan of the nearby area. Sophia, having reached the fence several seconds before, had her carbine slung over her shoulder. Reaching out, she gripped the chain link tightly in her hands, pulling apart in a single, fluid motion. Metal strained and groaned under the force, twisting and bending as she continued to apply pressure. Within seconds, she had a sizeable hole torn through the fence.

Pulling her Beretta back into her hands, she stepped through, Jacob following close behind. He could hear the sporadic, echoing report from multiple automatic weapons, punctuated by the deeper, resounding blasts that told of Triela's making good use of her Winchester M97 shotgun.

His pulse thundering in his ears, Jacob quickly crept across the compound towards the warehouse. A young man dressed in combat fatigues and clutching an MP5 came around the corner of the building and gave a sharp bellow of shock and pain as two three-round bursts of 5.56mm NATO rounds impacted him almost simultaneously. A slight flash of movement from above caught Jacob's eye. Glancing up, he saw the vague shape of a head and shoulders silhouetted against the night sky. Instinctively he brought the muzzle of his C8 up, squeezing the trigger to fire off a second burst of rounds. A gurgling cry of pain floated back to him, and he saw the figure on the roof slump forward, slipping over the edge to crash to the ground in a limp, bloody heap.

Reaching the warehouse, Jacob flattened himself against the corrugated aluminum wall, crouching down and peering around the corner to check for any approaching hostiles. Sophia quickly sprinted down to the opposite corner to check the other side, darting back towards him when she confirmed that the immediate area was clear.

Aware that there could still be guards stationed on the warehouse's roof, Jacob signalled Sophia to begin scaling the building.

Nodding her understanding, Sophia slung her Beretta around behind her and unwound the grappling line looped about her waist. Taking careful aim, she twirled the padded metal hooks in a slow overhand circle, steadily increasing the pace until they were just a blur to Jacob's eyes. With practiced ease, she released to hooks, letting the line spool out from between her fingers. The hook zipped up and over the edge of the roof, landing with a muted _thud_. Giving the line a sharp tug to latch it in place, she began her ascent.

Not waiting for her to reach the roof, Jacob crept carefully over to the warehouse's main door. Shouldering his own weapon, he slipped a small C4 breaching charge from one of the pockets of his tac-vest. Peeling off the protective paper covering the adhesive strip, he slapped the thumb-sized plastic-explosive to the cold steel surface of the heavy rolling door, behind the thick metal chain holding it closed.

Jogging away several steps, Jacob pulled out the small detonator and, flipping up the plastic switch-cap, flicked the toggle.

There was deafening _bang_, accompanied by a blinding flash as the charge detonated, shearing through the heavy steel links of the chain securing the door, sending several chunks of metal flying off into the darkness. As soon as the breaching blast subsided, Jacob was moving, C8 once again in hand.

Reaching out, he gave a hard shove, rolling one of the warehouse's double doors open several feet. At the same time, he heard the rhythmic popping of Sophia firing off three more bursts from her Beretta; proof of there indeed having been additional guards stationed up there.

"Three hostiles down."

Jacob keyed his own radio, replying to Sophia's whispered report. "Copy that, surveillance shots show a roof hatch by the north-east corner of the building. Make your way there and prepare cross-fire position once inside."

"Copy."

Taking a deep, steadying breath, Jacob tightened his grip on his carbine, and then stepped through into the warehouse.

Sophia scanned the rooftop, searching for the access hatch Jacob had said was there. She calmly stepped over the still-bleeding corpse of the second man she had shot, his AK47 still clutched in his hands. Elsewhere in the compound, she could make out the echoing sounds of combat: the rattling pops of gunfire, the brief, overlapping shouts of the injured, the sporadic echoing booms and fiery flash of grenades. Over it all was the soft, muted, intermingling voices of her fellow _fratello_ teams talking over the radio's tactical channel. She could smell smoke from the fires started by Agapita's mortar, as well as the acrid stench of burnt gunpowder.

Finally locating the hatch, she ran over and knelt down beside it. The hatch wasn't locked or even secured in any fashion, which she was thankful for. Already she was starting to feel an odd, itching sensation between her shoulders at the idea of Jacob being along down there. There was no intel on how many Padania terrorists might be stationed within the warehouse itself, and the idea of Jacob walking in there unprepared, possibly walking into an ambush, almost made her nauseous with worry.

With a grim determination, she shoved her worries aside and pulled her attention back to the mission, where it belonged.

With a sharp flick of her wrist Sophia tore open the hatch, pointing the muzzle of her SCP 70/90 into the hole. Leaning forward, she scanned the interior of the warehouse around the access ladder's base. Seeing that the immediate area was safe, she stepped up to the edge of the hatch and dropped down. Dropping into a defensive crouch as she landed, Sophia immediately swept her Beretta up and scanned the area.

Positioned at the far end of a diamond-mesh steel cat-walk that almost completely encircled the warehouse, Sophia had a perfect vantage point to survey the entire interior of the building. She could see Jacob at the far end, picking his way carefully between stacked rows of wooden crates. Some of the crates were piled three, even four tiers high, creating a confusing maze of potential hiding places.

Slowly, working in unison, the pair swept the warehouse for hostiles. Finding the building empty, save for themselves, Sophia flipped herself over the catwalk railing, landing lightly on the ground below.

"Okay, we're clear, start planting the charges." Sophia nodded at her handler's curt order, setting out at once to comply.

She clambered up one stack of crates, squeezing between two large boxes. Reaching into one of the rear pockets of her tactical belt, Sophia withdrew one of her four demolition charges. Nestling the half-kilo block of C4 up against one of the crates, she switched on the radio-activated primer unit, arming the charge. Moving on, she made her way to another section of the warehouse.

Hopping down, the heel of Sophia's boot caught a splintered edge of one of the crates below, which broke apart under her. Unbalanced, she tipped backwards, her head slamming into the crate behind her. There was a dull _thud_ as she impacted the thick wooden planks, and she winced slightly, more out of instinctual reaction to the blow, rather than having actually felt any pain.

"You okay?"

Sophia's face flushed slightly in embarrassment, and she cursed her own stupidity for not paying closer attention. "I'm fine. I just slipped."

She was about to continue on when the sudden realization hit her. Stepping back, she lightly banged on the side of the crate she'd banged into. Again there was only a dull thump to be heard. The crates were supposed to be full of weapons: rifles, handguns, ammunition and the like. They shouldn't fill the crate so completely as to insulate the sound of any impact to the crate.

Curious, Sophia climbed up on top of the crate. Kneeling down, she took hold of one corner of the crate and carefully peeled it back, exposing the contents within. She felt a creeping chill slid down her spine as she peered in, seeing not the multitude of weapons and ammo that she'd been expecting.

"Jacob! Come here, quick!"

Looking up from the C4 charge he was planting at Sophia's panicked yell, Jacob's C8 magicked itself into his hands and he was running full-bore, heedless of any potential dangers that might be in his way. He searched frantically for her, finally located the black-clad girl perched atop one of the taller stacks of crates, near the south-east corner of the warehouse.

"What is it, what's wrong?" She peered down at him, her face furrowed in a look of perplexed worry.

"There aren't any weapons in here," she replied softly. Confused, Jacob heaved himself onto the bottom crate, climbing his way up to stand just below where Sophia knelt over a torn-open crate.

"What do you mean, there aren't any weapons?" She simply pointed down into the crate she was seated on. Frowning, Jacob leaned over, finding to his immediate horror that she was right.

"Son of a bitch. Check the other crates." With a burst of motion Sophia was off, leaping over the intervening gap to the neighbouring stack. Again she tore off a corner section of the crate's lid to reveal the crate's contents. With growing anxiety edging the normally melodic sound of her voice, she called out to him "It's the same."

Together, working frantically, Jacob and Sophia tore open a dozen other crates, finding every one the same as the last.

Biting back a vehement string of curses that he didn't want Sophia overhearing, Jacob keyed his radio, straining to keep an even tone to his voice as he report he and Sophia's findings.

"This is Echo team to Osprey, come in Osprey."

"This is Osprey; we copy you Echo team, go ahead." The reserved, measured girlish voice answering the radio served to identify the operator. Where Jean was, to leave Claes manning the comm-line, Jacob didn't know and wasn't currently in the mood to care.

Jacob practically barked his response into the radio, only dimly aware of Sophia coming up to stand beside him. "We've got a serious problem down here, Osprey."

"Please elaborate."

"We've got a warehouse full of weapon's crates without any weapons in them." Jacob heard a faint scrambling from the other end of the radio line, and suddenly Jean's voice snapped in his ear. "What the hell do you mean, there are no weapons in them?"

"What I mean, Jean, is that we've got over a hundred crates in here, filled with nothing but _sandbags_."

"Sandbags?"

"Yeah, sandbags. From the looks of it, there was never any weapon's shipment stored here at all. This is a set-up. Our intel was cooked; we've walked into the middle of an ambush." There was a brief pause, Jacob guessed as Jean struggled to process this new information. Then, "All teams pull back and rendezvous at secondary extraction points! I repeat, all teams pull put, now!"

* * *

Triela gritted her teeth in a fierce, almost feral snarl as she charged forward, her body pitched forward and low to the worn, scratched hardwood floor. Behind her she could hear Hillshire panting slightly as he made his way hurriedly up the stairs.

The door immediately to Triela's left, made of well-worn, heavy oak & deeply inscribed on the upper panels with designs of curling, intertwined vines opened, briefly granting her a view of the small ante-room within, before the tall, shadowy form of a heavy-shouldered man dove forward, hoping to catch her around the legs and drive her to the ground.

Leaping into the air lightly, she brought her knee up sharply, connecting with the underside of the unfortunate man's jaw with a bone-jarring force of impact. Triela felt the crackling crunch of bone as the man's jaw shattered, his head whipping to the side hard enough to snap the delicate tissues of the spinal column.

Triela flipped forward with the momentum of her charging leap, tucking her shoulder to roll to her feet, even as the faceless Padanian crumpled to the ground in a lifeless heap.

Spinning on the toe of her tailored, knee-high leather boots, Triela snapped the barrel of her Winchester Model 1897 shotgun up just in time to catch a second Padanian gunman following behind the first. Caught off guard by the sudden and shocking death of his comrade, the man spent several moments frozen in the doorway, his H&K MP5 sagging slightly in his hands.

Those several moments were fatal ones, as Triela squeezed the trigger on her M97, her synthetic muscles almost completely absorbing the recoil force as the shotgun bucked in her hands. A loud muzzle-flash, followed by an acrid puff of smoke and roaring BANG issued forth and thirty-two grams of hardened lead shot slammed into the man's chest, ripping through skin, muscle and bone like butter. The heavy, twelve-gauge shot burst out the man's back in a conical spray of blood and bone fragments, splattering across the wall behind him in a crimson spray that glittered faintly in the weak moonlight filtering through the windows.

The slowly falling corpse alright forgotten in her mind, Triela rose to her feet, smooth, practised motions slamming back the pump-action arming lever, ejecting the spent cartridge, the brass back-plate clinking faintly as it struck the ground. With the same smooth, even motion, she brought the pump lever back to its forward position, chambering the next cartridge.

A flash of movement in front of her caught Triela's eye, resolving itself into a third Padanian down at the far end of the hall. His almost stereotypical AK47 already shouldered, Triela pitched herself in a forward roll as the man let loose with a burst of rounds. The 7.62mm bullets ripped through the air right above her, chewing up huge chunks of wood as they smashed through the floor, kicking up a hail of splintered fragments.

Triela was firing even before she'd finished her defensive roll. Her first shot missed hitting the man directly, but the spread of the lead bearings still ensured a glancing blow. Several of the heavy metal balls tore into the man's leg, shattering his knee.

Bellowing in pain, he collapsed to the ground, his rifle dropping from his hands and skittering across the floor. Triela's second shot found its mark dead-center in the man's face, blowing his head apart like a ripe melon ruled at a brick wall.

Hearing the sharp, triple-burst fire of a handgun from behind, Triela swivelled frantically, her hand snapping back and forward to rearm her shotgun. She found Hillshire standing over the corpse of a fourth Padania gunman, a thin plume of smoke wafting from the barrel of his chrome-finish SIG Sauer P232. The gunman was splayed out across the floor, his feet still hidden with the doorway of the bedroom opposite the one the first two men had emerged.

Triela felt her face burning with humiliation and shame at not having cleared the other bedroom before moving on. "Damn it, how could I be so _stupid_?" Had her handler not been following behind close behind, she would likely be the one lying on the ground, with a full clip of rifle-rounds riddling her body.

Striding up next to her, Hillshire placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder, smiling faintly down at her. "Don't worry about it; there's a reason why we handlers follow behind you girls."

"I thought it was so you wouldn't be in our way?" Triela replied with slightly more snap than she'd intended, brushing his hand off irritatedly.

Hillshire frowned at her tone. "Watch your mouth. Everyone makes mistakes, Triela. Even you."

Triela rolled her eyes faintly, glad for the deep shadows so that Hillshire couldn't see. "Are you chastising me or praising me here, because I'm getting kind of confused."

"You know perfectly well that I'm capable of doing both at the same time." The flat seriousness of his voice made Triela pause and turn back to look up at the taller man. Seeing the faint, slightly amused smile on his face though brought a smile to Triela's own, despite her best efforts to resist.

"Okay, okay; I'm sorry, all right? You happy now?" she said, chuckling. Instantly the smile was gone from Hillshire's face, and he stalked forward a few steps to scan the interior of the bedroom. "I'll be happy when this mission is over and we're all back at the agency compound, safe."

Triela groaned, rolling her eyes far more extravagantly this time, making sure that Hillshire saw it. "Oh God, not this again. Honestly, what's the use of being a combat cyborg if I can't actually go _into_ combat? That doesn't make _any_ sense."

"We are not going to get into this here. This is neither the time nor the place." Hillshire's tone made it clear that he was finished with the subject and would not tolerate any more discussion on the matter. Frankly, that suited Triela just fine.

"Victor, Triela, what's your status?"

The sound of Guise's voice over their radios caught both their attentions, Hillshire's hand flying up to his earpiece to respond. "Guise, this is Hillshire. We've just finished clearing the first floor. What's wrong?"

"Henrietta and I could use your help up here. We have a small group of Padania gunmen holed-up in the last bedroom. They're barricaded in pretty heavily and we can't get close enough to take them out."

"We're on our way." Hillshire nodded to Triela, who sprang towards the stairs in a burst of motion.

Taking the stairs two at a time, Triela crested the top and stepped out onto the villa's second floor. She immediately spotted Guise and Henrietta at the far end of the hallway, pressed up against the wall on either side of the bedroom door. Bullets rattled through the open door in sporadic bursts, most sailing through the open door of the bedroom opposite it and impacting against the far wall.

Henrietta looked up from her crouched position closest to the stairs as Triela loped down the hallway, the smaller and younger girl looking rather dishevelled from the protracted gunfight. The pouting scowl on her otherwise angelic, heart-shaped face marked her displeasure at her current state of appearance.

Her jaw-length light brown hair was mussed up and slightly frizzed, jutting out at odd angles in defiance of her navy-blue velvet headband. The light grey jacket and white cotton shirt of her private-school uniform that had become an almost iconic symbol within the agency bore numerous small nicks and tears, and were both heavily streaked with dirt, dust and splattered blood.

"How many are in there?" Triela had heard Hillshire coming up behind her, and she leaned in over Henrietta, peeking around the doorframe to try and catch a glimpse of the room within. A sharp tug at the collar of her calf-length black over-coat forced her to stumble back several steps, moments before a renewed barrage of 9x19mm Parabellum rounds.

Twisting around, she met Hillshire's disapproving scowl with a flat glare of her own. "What? It's not like those little pea-shooter bullets can actually _hurt_ me."

"And if one of those "pea-shooters" happened to hit you in the eye? Then what?" Hillshire's expression darkened noticeably as he replied, face creased with worry and anger.

Triela opened her mouth to offer some slight smart-assed comment, but the words died in her throat. However much she might want to argue, she had to admit that he was right. Even a simple 9mm handgun round would kill her if it managed to penetrate her vulnerable eyes. All of a sudden she felt slightly nauseous and ashamed at the dumb risk she'd taken.

Even knowing that Hillshire was right, Triela would be damned before she admitted it to him, especially in front of others, so she contented herself with staring at the ground, adopting a suitable chagrined expression of regret and remorse.

She felt her face starting to heat in embarrassment as Hillshire continued to glare down at her. Fortunately for her, Guise rescued her by pulling everyone's attention to him.

"We counted at least seven in there; there might be a couple more, I can't be certain. They're dug in hard, with heavy barricades set up around the door, along with secondary barriers placed in cross-fire positions at the far corners of the room."

"Any other way in?" Guise shook his head at Hillshire's pondering. "Okay, give me a minute." Hillshire keyed his radio, connecting to the dedicated communication's line with the agency's mobile command center.

"This is Alpha team to Osprey, come in Osprey." There was a momentary pause as they all waited for a response, before Claes' soft, even-toned voice answered. "This is Osprey, go ahead Alpha team."

"We have a group of Padanians holed up in the south-west bedroom on the villa's second floor. We can't in to take them out. Is there any other way to breach the room?" Again a momentary pause before, "Stand by Alpha."

All four waited in tense silence, Guise and Henrietta continuing to exchange fire with the men inside the room, lest they start to think that the pair had run out of ammo or had left. Finally their radios came alive again; Claes' voice replaced by Guise's older brother, Jean's, sharp, business-like tone. "This is Jean; I've got the villa's floor plans here in front of me.

"The en-suite bathrooms for both West-facing bedrooms are built side-by-side. They're new construction, added in when the villa was renovated about ten years ago. The walls should be simple tiled drywall sheets over two-by-four studs. Triela and Henrietta should be able to punch a suitable-sized hole clear through one bathroom into the other."

Triela was moving even before Hillshire had given her a nod to proceed. Henrietta hung back for several seconds, waiting for direct confirmation from Guise, before hurrying after her taller, older counter-part.

Stepping into the simple, yet elegantly furnished bathroom, Triela immediately began running her hands experimentally over the wall separating the two rooms. Sure enough, as she knocked gently against the tiles, she could hear and feel the wall's hollow construction.

Setting aside her shotgun, she cocked her arm back as far as it would go, and then slammed her fist forward with blinding speed and force.

Cream-coloured terracotta tiles shattered and spun away under the impact, Triela's gloved fist punching a neat hole clean through the wall, bursting out the other side in a hail of broken and dislodged tile fragments. Ripping her hand free, Triela cocked her arm back for a second swing and paused when Henrietta stormed up beside her, the other girl's tiny, delicate hands, bunched up into tight fists, blurring as she pounded at the wall with an almost feverish intensity.

"My, aren't we awfully gung-ho today?" Triela teased lightly, flashing Henrietta a broad grin.

Henrietta didn't return Triela's smile, or even turn away from her task as she replied. "The sooner we kill those men, the sooner I can keep them from hurting Guise." The dangerous, lethal gleam in Henrietta's eyes was a perfect match to the flat, emotionless tone in her normally soft-spoken, almost timid voice.

Triela could recognize the signs that Henrietta has slipped into an obsessed fixation; something the younger girl was rather prone to do when matters of her beloved handler's safety was at stake.

"Can't argue with that," Triela muttered, half to herself.

Between the two of them, a decently man-sized hole was quickly punched and torn through the wall. Almost instantly Henrietta was through, a flash-bang grenade unclipped from her belt and ready to be thrown. Triela darted forward, just managing to catch Henrietta's arm as she reached the door into the bedroom.

"Hold on 'Etta, I have an idea." Henrietta twisted around to cast a dark, menacing glare back at Triela, as if she'd just asked her to abandon Guise to the gunmen beyond the door. "Guise said that…"

"I know what Guise said Henrietta," Triela interrupted, speaking quickly so that Henrietta didn't start to think that Triela was deliberately trying to keep her from helping their respective handlers. "But we still don't know how many enemies are in there. They might even have the door to the bathroom barricaded. We should each attack from a different angle, so that we can be sure to catch them off-guard."

Now that it was clear that Triela wasn't trying to prevent her from helping Guise, Henrietta's face softened back to its more typical innocent, doe-eyed expression. "What do you mean, Triela? This is the only other way into the room."

"Maybe not." Triela carefully considered the situation, calling up the brief, half-second glimpse of the room she'd manage to catch before being unceremoniously hauled back. There had been a large, north-facing window almost directly opposite the door, the heavy drapery pulled closed to obscure the view of any potential sniper. It also blocked the view _out_ the window as well. Which gave Triela an idea.

"Wait here. Give me a thirty-second count before tossing your flash." With that, Triela dashed to the large, arched window, ignoring Henrietta's weak protests of confusion.

Throwing the window open, a stiff, cool breeze blew back into Triela's face, making her long, waist-length pigtails dance and flutter.

Triela slung her shotgun over one shoulder before swinging herself out the window, onto the narrow ledge that ran all the way around the villa. More of a simple projection of stonework defining the separation between the first and second floors, the ledge was only a few scant inches wide. It was plenty wide enough for Triela.

Fingers probing, digging into the mortar between the fitted stone façade of the villa's exterior, Triela carefully crept along the ledge until she was within reach of the window into the contested bedroom.

A blindingly bright flash shone through the curtains covering the window, followed immediately by an echoing BANG that was only slightly muffled by the well-insulated window frame.

Cursing under her breath at Henrietta's impatience, Triela frantically grabbed hold of the window's upper sill, pulling herself into position directly in front of the multi-paned glass. Leaping up, she brought both booted feet crashing into the window, the glass shattering into thousands of tiny, glittering fragments that tumbled to the floor, the thick fabric of the curtains catching most of the crystalline shards before they had a chance to spray into the room.

Not having time to bring her shotgun to bear, Triela pulled her SIG Sauer P232 from her underarm holster, planting a bullet into the temple of the first man she saw crouched within, dropping him like a stone; a small plume of blood spurting outward and arcing delicately through the air as he fell.

Several of the men had turned to the bathroom door in an effort to defend against Henrietta, who had almost immediately begun unloading her P90's unique 5.7x28mm rounds, instantly felling three gunmen in her first volley; their bodies riddled with nearly a dozen bullets each.

The remaining seven men, still recovering from the combined audio/visual assault from Henrietta's flash-bang, were caught completely off guard by Triela's sudden and violent entrance. Three of the men, huddled behind a secondary barricade, feebly attempted to maintain effective suppressing fire against Guise and Hillshire, firing blindly through the open door while cringing down, eyes shut tight against the overwhelming glare in their over-stimulated eyes.

Three of the men were twisted around, attempting to fend off Henrietta's continual, furious attack. Even as Triela swung her still smoking P232 to bear on her second target, one of those three men toppled backward, blood spurting from a half-dozen perfectly placed shots to his chest.

The last gunman, along with one of the two remaining men confronting Henrietta, turned in shock as Triela felled their comrade. A quick double-tap felled the first, both bullets impacting square in the man's chest, shredding his heart. A second burst brought down the second man and Triela turned her attention on the final three men.

Before Triela could even take aim, Henrietta opened up with a full-auto blaze of gunfire, emptying an entire cartridge into the clustered men. Blood fountained in every direction; spraying the floor, wall and ceiling with gore.

In the sudden aftermath left in the wake of the vicious battle, the sudden silence was startling. Triela's ears rang with the echoing rattle of bullets scything through the air, ricocheting off centuries old stone and shattering glass.

Guise and Hillshire stepped into the room, pistols still drawn; just in case. Surveying the widespread damage churned up by the hailstorm of bullets, he shook his head, chuckling wryly. "Well Triela, looks like Henrietta will be claiming the body-count crown for this mission." Still hovering in the doorway to the bathroom, Henrietta positively beamed at the comment. She ran over to Guise, her P90 now held protectively to her chest, like a child's favourite toy.

"Guise, are you okay?" The man smiled down at her, placing one hand on her shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze.

"Of course I am. You did very well Henrietta." Triela couldn't help but smile warmly as Henrietta's face lit up with an even greater intensity than before and she wrapped her arms tightly and appreciatively around Guise's waist.

Allowing her attention to wander away from the pair, Triela cast a critical eye around the room, her smile fading. Hillshire, noting the swift change to her attitude, strode over to her, concerned. He leaned in close, his voice pitched low so as not to be overheard. "What's wrong? You aren't jealous of Henrietta, are you? There will be plenty of time to reclaim your crown, if you are."

Shocked, Triela spun to face him, her mouth hanging open incredulously. "What? No, of course not! I can't believe you would think I'd be that petty."

"Well then, what is it? Something's bothering you."

Triela frowned, trying to find appropriate words to describe what she was feeling. "I don't know. Something just doesn't feel right, that's all."

"What do you mean Triela?" Henrietta stepped up next to elder compatriot, her face creased with concern. "We got all the bad guys. We won."

Triela shook her head, unable to dislodge the uneasy feeling settling into the pit of her stomach. "I don't know 'Etta. It just…it's seemed too easy."

"I would hardly call what we just went through "easy" Triela," Hillshire pointed out. "You girls both did very well."

"No, I'm telling you, this doesn't feel right. This was the only point we had even the slightest amount of trouble with. There were hardly any guards on the ground floor, and there were only four men on the first floor. I'm telling you, this was too easy."

"Don't be silly Triela. If it seemed so easy, then that just means we're getting better, right?"

"I don't know Henrietta; I think Triela may be right." Henrietta stared up at Guise in puzzlement; confused and slightly put out that he would take someone else's opinion over her own.

"There are bunk beds in here to house ten men. Almost every bedroom in the villa is set up the same way, the larger ones holding room for fourteen, even sixteen men. There's enough room in this villa to house over fifty people, yet we encountered less than half of that."

"Maybe the rest aren't in the compound," Hillshire suggested. "We could have caught them in the middle of conducting night training."

"I suppose it's possible." Guise frowned, considering. Clearly he wasn't convinced by so simple and convenient an explanation.

"Maybe we should…" Hillshire began, but was cut off by the sound of his radio crackling to live in his ear.

"All teams pull back and rendezvous at secondary extraction points! I repeat, all teams pull put, now!"

All four glanced at one another, their faces matching mirrors of shock and disbelief. Why was Jean calling everyone back?

_Something must have happened to one of the other teams,_ Triela thought to herself.

"Okay, let's move. We can worry about our potentially missing terrorists later." Guise quickly ushered everyone back out, into the hallway.

The group was half-way to the stairs when Triela pulled up short, her ears perking up at a sudden, odd sound coming from below. "Everybody, wait." Instantly all motion stopped and weapons sprang to hand. "Henrietta, do you hear that?"

The petit brunette strained her ears, closing her eyes to focus on whatever it was Triela had heard. Then, "Yes, I can hear it too."

"What is it?"

"Voices," Triela replied, swinging her shotgun back into her hands. "And footsteps. Someone else is inside the villa with us."

"Maybe it's one of the other teams come to check on us?" Henrietta piped hopefully.

Triela frowned, one slim eyebrow arched in sceptical disbelief. "Without radioing ahead to let us know? Not likely."

As they were pondering the full implications of what Triela was implying, the hallway was suddenly bathed in light; intricately carved wall sconces blinking back to life, casting a warm yellowed glow all along the length of the hallway.

Seconds later, a much stronger, harsher white light flooded through the windows set at either end of the hallway. The quiet night air was then rent apart by the cacophonous popping of dozens of automatic rifles firing from virtually every direction at once. They were punctuated by the much deeper, rattling roar of several M240 medium machine guns.

"Dammit, what's going on?" Guise wondered aloud.

Hillshire strode quickly to the end of the hall, peering carefully out the window, into the compound spread out below. "It looks the Padanians are mounting some kind of counter-attack."

To illustrate his point, a sudden explosion split the night air, sending a roiling ball of fire climbing up into the air beneath an oily black cloud of smoke.

Triela suddenly dashed down the hall towards Hillshire. The man turned at the rapid sound of her approach, ready to warn her away from the window. At the last moment though, she swerved into the bedroom opposite where the hectic battle had only minutes before ended.

"Triela, where are you going?"

"To find out how many of these guys we're dealing with and get into position to catch them from behind."

Hillshire felt his heart leap into his throat at the words, a cold sweat breaking out all over his body. "No! Triela it's too dangerous, you have no idea how many Padania gunmen are down there."

"All the more reason to collect reliable intel," she retorted.

Before Hillshire could offer further protest, she had pushed open the bedroom's east-facing window, letting in a cool breeze that was now tainted with the stench of smoke and burnt gunpowder. Swinging herself once more out onto the narrow ledge, Triela hopped nimbly over to the aluminum downspout anchored to the corner of the building a couple of feet away, using it as a makeshift pole to slide down to the ground.

Hillshire was left standing halfway across the room, staring out the open window. A knot of worry ate away at his insides, clawing its way through him painfully. He felt as if a tight band was constricting his chest, squeezing the breath from his lungs.

"She'll be fine, Victor." Hillshire flinched at Guise's touch, the other man placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. "Triela knows how to take care of herself. I'm sure she'll be fine."

Not trusting his voice to reply, Hillshire merely continued to stare mutely out the window, until he was eventually pulled away by his fellow handler.

Triela darted along the villa's east wall as soon as her feet hit the ground, crouched low to ensure she remained hidden. Along the compound's northern perimeter, off to Triela's right, she could just make out the top of a watch tower above the sloped, arching roof of the first bunkhouse.

Hidden in the dark, nearly solid shadows cast by the intense glare of the searchlights illuminating the compound's interior, Triela watched as several small groups of Padania gunmen sprinted across her field of view, weapons shouldered, some firing towards distant targets as they ran.

Resisting the urge to go and help her fellow teams, Triela reluctantly forced her attention away from the battle raging on around her. Her priority was protecting Hillshire. And to do that, she needed to know what they were up against.

Stopping beside a set of patio doors leading into the villa's sole ground-floor bedroom, Triela gave the ornate brass handle an experimental twist, finding the door locked.

Pausing, she held her breath, waiting for a particularly loud burst of criss-crossing hail of bullets to fill the air before giving a sharp, forceful twist to the handle, snapping and twisting the locking mechanism within the handle, allowing the door to swing open when she jerked it outward.

The stiffening autumn wind blowing down from the nearby mountains made the drapes flanking the patio doors billow inwards, their rippling folds dancing gracefully.

Triela had just taken her first step into the room when the edge of the drapes caught on the shade of a small lamp set atop an oak dresser. Hissing in alarm, Triela reached out for the falling lamp, her fingertips just managing to brush it before it slipped beyond her grasp, hitting the floor and shattering with an echoing crash that sounded disproportionately loud in her ears.

Cursing under her breath, Triela lunged forward at the sudden sound of running feet heading towards her. She threw herself to the floor, sliding up against the wall just as a barrage of bullets smashed through the door, sending splintered shards of wood flying everywhere.

When the deadly rain finally subsided, Triela crouched patiently, waiting as the door swung slowly open. The instant she saw the tip of the first man's AK47 peek past the edge of the blasted, chewed-up door, she surged forward. Lashing out with one foot, Triela slammed the heel of her boot into the center of the door, sending it smashing back against the man with bone-shattering force, knocking him sprawling to the floor.

Swinging herself around to stand in front of the now closed door, Triela levelled her shotgun and fired off two shells in quick succession, smirking with a morbid sense of satisfaction at the wailing screams of pain that followed.

She spun away as a second hail of bullets pierced the quickly deteriorating door. Large chunks of splintered wood were broken off and torn away from the dozens of rounds pumped through it, and the entire center of the door was gone, replaced by a ragged, uneven hole half as big as Triela's head.

After a few seconds, the door crashed inwards, the remaining guards not wanting to risk a repeat performance. Triela let it bounce back from the wall, this time huddled out of sight on the other side of the door.

Gritting her teeth with effort, Triela swung her shotgun around in a smooth, graceful arc, her hands wrapped around the barrel just above where the bayonet attached, using the gun's hardened wooden stock as a makeshift club.

To Triela's great frustration, the man dove under the arc of her swing, the heavy block of polished wood whistling harmlessly over his head. Changing tactics, Triela let her shotgun fall to the floor and snapped forward with a vicious jab-uppercut combo, sweeping one foot out to trip the man up as he threw his hands up to fend off her attack.

Bone splintered and shattered as her gloved fist impacted the man's upraised forearm, drawing a sharp grunt from the man. To his credit however, he barely paused in acknowledging the pain before he dropped his shoulder and charged forward, hoping to tackle her to the ground and overwhelm her.

Bracing herself, Triela allowed the man to barrel into her, his shoulder slamming hard against her stomach, the reinforced carbon-fibre weave body armour under her skin absorbing virtually all of the impact force.

Twisting around in the man's grip so that they both faced the same direction, Triela slipped her left arm around the man's neck, setting the headlock and clamping down with brutally crushing force. With a quick, simple twist of her upper body and arms, there came an audible _crunch_ of splintering vertebrae and the man went limp in her arms.

Releasing the dead man to slump to the floor, Triela sucked in several deep, steadying breaths, stooping down to retrieve her shotgun. She stepped out into the hallway, working the pump-action to slide another shell into place as she did so.

That was when she noticed the man standing directly in front of her, a wicked grin on his face, the barrel of a combat shotgun levelled at her chest, less than five feet in front of her.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl in Triela's mind, each slow, thundering beat of her artificial heart echoing and reverberating in her ears.

Strange details seemed to leap forward to her attention as she stared into the slightly crazed, blood-lust filled soft brown eyes of the man before her. His hair was a dark, luxuriant black, neatly trimmed and combed back in a very classy, fashionable style that Triela found similar to something Kara's handler Michele Pagani might choose. Yet the man had several days' growth of scruffy bead dirtying his cheeks and chin.

There was a thin scar above the man's left eye, running just above the eyebrow and curling down around the eye socket, before twisting outward sharply to stop just below his temple. The scar was the only marring feature on an otherwise rather ruggedly handsome, deeply tanned face.

The man wore an expensive-looking, crisp white shirt tucked into dark grey dress pants, both bearing the trademark styling of Armani custom tailoring. A narrow, hand woven leather belt encircled the man's waist. In contrast to the man's elegant, cultured outfit, Triela noticed an old, slightly frayed cotton handkerchief poking out of his breast pocket. A memento of a distant love or relation, perhaps?

The smell of expensive, designer cologne filled Triela's nose. It was a soft, musky scent laced with subtle hints of vanilla and rose oil. Beneath it though was the distinctive, unpleasant odour of overlapping layers of stale sweat.

All of these incongruous, slightly clashing details faded quickly from Triela's mind though as her attention was invariably brought back to the cold steel barrel aimed at her chest.

She never heard the sound of the shotgun blast. She saw the blindingly bright muzzle-flash, felt the slug slam into her, shredding the synthetic skin of her chest, shearing through the heavily reinforced body-armour plates of her upper torso. Pain exploded through her entire body, knocking all the air from her lungs. Her eyes bulged, her mouth agape as the unimaginable agony ripped along every single nerve ending. Never in her life could she ever remember feeling so much concentrated physical pain.

She felt the slug explode out the back of her shoulder, sending a cascading wash of synthetic blood, hydraulic lubricant and splintered steel shrapnel splashing across the floor and far wall of the room behind her.

Triela felt her arms go weak. Her own shotgun clattered to the ground, slipping free from suddenly nerveless fingers. All the strength poured from her body and she could feel her knees trembling.

Blood streamed down her chest and arm in a flowing torrent, instantly soaking through the fabric of her dark beige shirt and seeping into her coat. It ran in rivulets down her limp arm, dripping off her fingertips and a steady stream.

Within seconds the blood and other internal fluids had soaked through the thick wool weave of her pleated skirt and had begun to run down her leg, pooling in the bottom of her boot. Strangely, despite the very real possibility that she was only seconds away from death, Triela couldn't help but fixate on the fact that the feel of the blood oozing down her thigh was setting off an oddly pleasant, ticklish sensation within her.

The sensation quickly faded, along with all other physical sensation, as a cold creeping numbness descended upon her. As terrifying as it was to feel her body sliding into the consuming embrace of death, the only small blessing was that it took with it the agonizing pain.

Before Triela knew what was happening, she was sprawled out on her back, staring up at the pale, lightly textured plaster ceiling. She didn't remember having fallen.

A shadow darkened her view, and the Padania man's sneering face suddenly filled her vision. He loomed over her, a sickening leer giving him an evil, predatory appearance.

"Well, well; it seems this baby was worth the money after all. The higher ups are going to love hearing that you mechanical freaks aren't as indestructible as everyone seems to think you are. Giacomo said that he'd manage to take one of you out in Venice, but most simply assumed it was when the warhead blew that killed the little bitch."

Beatrice. He was talking about Beatrice, who'd been killed during the major operation in Venice several months ago. The agency had lost two cyborgs in that operation: Beatrice to an auto-cannon round to the chest fired by Giacomo Dante, the de-facto leader and mastermind of the Padania separatist faction. And then Silvia, killed in a massive explosion triggered by wired grenades booby-trapping the entrance to St. Mark's bell tower.

"But now that I know all it takes is a twelve-gauge, high-explosive shell to put one of you girls on your ass, we'll definitely make sure to start buying more of the things. With our new international contacts, I don't imagine it should be too much of a problem.

"But those are hardly matters for you to worrying that pretty little head of yours over."

Triela stared blankly back up at him, watching as his eyes trailing sickeningly up and down the length of her body. Then he let a tired, resigned sigh, shaking his head. "What a waste. If I weren't aware of just how dangerous you things are, I might have seriously considered taking you home with me. Oh well, like the French say: _c'est la vie_." His face suddenly twisted into an almost feral mask of rage, his eyes burning with an unfathomably deep loathing. "What I can and _will_ do, however, is make you pay for all the friends and colleagues you and the rest of you freaks are responsible for killing. God damned government-sanctioned murderers!"

Triela screamed as pain seared through her side, her back arching off the floor from the force of impact as the man drove his steel-toed boot into the ribs of her injured side. Tears sprung to her eyes, immediately overflowing to slide down her softly rounded cheeks. Another garbled, choking scream was ripped from her as he landed a second kick to her side, and she could feel sharp, shooting lances of pain spearing through her chest as her ribs, cracked and weakened by the explosive shotgun shell blast, snapped under the strain of the blows.

Humiliated at her weakness and inability to do her duty as she'd been designed to do, Triela sobbed quietly to herself; her lips trembling, tears flowing freely down the sides of her face. This could _not_ be happening to her! She was the best the agency had. She was the oldest and most senior cyborg operative, a veteran of over a hundred combat missions. She'd spent months being specially trained by Italy's elite GIS division of the Carabinieri military police force. She was the best of the best! And she been caught off guard and taken down by some smug, stuck-up prick of a self-righteous terrorist _bastardo_.

She'd stopped listening to the man's ideological ranting, Triela's mind descending into a small, dark private world of its own. Something tickled at her though, screaming at her to pay attention, that something was going on that she needed to know about.

Struggling to claw her way back out of the oppressive void closing around her, Triela strained to focus her mind on what the man was saying, something whispering to her that it was vitally important that she do so.

"…so fast. That's why I made sure not to blow out your heart. I plan to take my time with you, while the rest of my friends clean out the rest of _your_ friends. It's amazing how gullible you government dogs can be when you're fed the kinds of information you want to see and hear. Why, we hardly…"

Triela stopped listening, her mind latched to that one piece of knowledge he'd offered her. He'd missed her heart. He hadn't wanted her dying on him before he could extract what he felt was his owed vengeance, and had instead merely blown out her right lung. The numbness, the sensation of death closing in, it had all been I her head. She wasn't dying! She'd simply assumed from the unimaginable pain rippling across every inch of her body that she _must_ have been dying.

With this knowledge, Triela felt a renewed surge of strength flow through her, banishing back the encroaching shadows. She blinked away her self-deprecating tears of bitterness and remorse; a firm, steel-hard resolve taking hold of her instead.

The man was still ranting inanely, preventing him from devoting his full attention to Triela. She immediately took advantage of this. He'd paced out a slow circuit around her body and was now roughly a foot away from her feet, slightly to the left of her.

Bracing herself against the inevitable searing blast of pain, Triela waited until the man was glancing away before she struck.

Using her still good left hand to push herself along the blood-slicked floorboards, Triela twisted her body around, snagging the man's calf with the toe of her right boot. As she jerked her foot back, towards herself, she lashed out hard with her other foot, slamming her heel into the man's kneecap. There was a sickeningly loud, wet POP as his knee shattered, and he tumbled to the ground with a yelped scream of shock and pain.

Before he had even hit the ground, Triela lunged up and forward, angling her body to crash down on top of the man. Before he had time to react, she brought her tightly clenched fist slamming down into his ruggedly good-looking face. Bone splintered and cracked, blood gushing out of his ruined nose and spurting up into Triela's own face.

Again and again her fist rose and fell, hammering him with crippling, lethal blows. She lost herself to the rhythmic motion; the steady rise and fall of her hand, the warm tingle of blood splattering against her face and neck.

She only stopped when the heard the crack of splintering wood, rather than bone and felt her knuckles smash into the floorboards. Bringing her gaze back into focus, Triela stared down at the ruined, meaty pulp of what used to be the man's face. Every part of his head above the lower jaw had been reduced to a vile, bloody soup of blood, pulverized flesh and bone, and tiny smashed globs of brain tissue. At least half of what was on the floor beneath her was also slowly sliding and dripping down her face. Her golden-yellow hair was stained crimson and was matted to her skull by layer upon layer of dried, congealing and fresh blood and other gore.

Rising unsteadily to her feet, Triela stumbled over to where her shotgun had dropped from her grasp. As she knelt down to pick it up, she heard the unmistakable sounds of running feet, heading her way. She chocked back a frustrated sob, for the first time in her memory agreeing with Hillshire in his desire to be back in the agency compound, safe and sound.

Fumbling with the now awkwardly long weapon, Triela brought it to bear in her left hand just as a man dressed in faded army fatigues came around the edge of the doorframe.

Her arm trembling mightily, Triela just barely managed to maintain a steady enough grip to fire off a single twelve-gauge shell into the man's chest, blowing him back several inches and dropping him to the round. The recoil tore the gun from her hand and spun her in a half-circle, almost sending her back to the ground as well.

Retrieving her shotgun, she tried to work the pump action lever to load the next cartridge. Unfortunately, her right hand refused to work and try as she might, she just couldn't get her fingers to close on the handle with enough strength to do the job.

More hurried footsteps sounded from out in the hall and snarling, Triela hurriedly adjusted her grip on the gun so that the barrel pointed down at the floor. Raising it to her shoulder, she hurled the weapon forward like a javelin just as a second man came into view. The bayonet attached to the end of the shotgun speared the unfortunate man at the base of his ribs, the weight of the weapon causing it to immediately drop, forcing the razor-honed blade to tear its way up, under his ribcage, slicing through his heart and killing him in seconds.

The shotgun useless to her in her current weakened state, Triela left it buried in the man's chest, instead drawing her H&K P7 handgun. Gripping the back of the slide in her teeth, she managed to pull it back far enough to cock the pistol, chambering the first round. Then, she staggered to the door, determined to complete what she'd set out to do.

Exiting out into the hallway, she glanced about in both directions, seeing the villa's ground floor to be seemingly empty. She knew that it was a lie, and crept forward carefully, wincing at each wet, squelching step of her right foot. Blood continued to flow from the grisly wound in her chest, seeping down her body to continue to pool inside her boot.

A warning tingle ran up Triela's spine and she hurled herself to the side, through the open door leading to the villa's formal dining room mere moments ahead of a stream of bullets streaking past. One of the bullets just managed to clip the back of her calf, tearing a wide furrow through her synthetic skin. The wound was shallow enough that it hadn't penetrated the lighter carbon-fibre weave armouring, so she shrugged of the relatively insignificant injury as another person might a simple bee-sting.

Twisting back around to face the rear of the villa, Triela realized how bad of a position she was in. With her right arm effectively disabled, she would have to lean completely out from behind the wall in order to get a clear shot at any of the Padania gunmen.

Sucking in a deep, steadying breath, his vision starting to grow hazy and distorted as waves of dizziness washed over her, Triela tightened her grip on her pistol and spun out into the hall, tilting her upper body almost parallel to the floor. Bracing her upper-arm on the edge of the doorframe, she squeezed off two shots before darting back into hiding. The first shot went wide, burying itself into the wall to the left of and a few inches below the top of the doorway leading into the stairwell. Her second shot found its mark though, punching into the shoulder of one of the two men she'd spotted leaning out of the doorway into the villa's theatre room.

Panting with exertion, Triela repeated the process, this time managing to land a direct hit with her first round dead-center of the second, uninjured man's forehead, killing him instantly. As she was pulling back into the dining room, a flash of movement made her spin around towards the villa's front door. A third Padanian positioned outside to guard the entrance had entered at the sound of the gun battle, UMP drawn and levelled.

Triela threw herself to the side as the man fired, the first bullet scoring a glancing blow across her face, ripping free a large chunk of her cheek, but like the wound in her leg, failing to penetrate her carbon-fibre armour.

Thrusting her arm out from behind the doorframe, she fired off three rounds, all three pounding into the man's torso, shredding his lungs and other vital organs. He was dead in seconds.

Left with only one bullet left in the clip of her P7, Triela fought to remain calm and composed. She could do this. There was likely only the last man in the cinema room left on the ground floor. All she had to do was kill him, and then she could make her way back up to rejoin Hillshire, Guise and Henrietta.

When she twisted around the corner to take out the last remaining terrorist, she found he wasn't still hiding in the cinema room. Instead, he was charging forward, less than four feet away from her!

Cursing, Triela took hasty aim and fired. Unfortunately, a powerful wave of dizziness made her stagger just as she was firing, throwing the bullet's trajectory off, sending it zipping harmlessly over the man's shoulder.

Biting back yet another vehement curse, Triela tossed the pistol aside and, in desperation, grabbed the back of the heavy, ornately carved matriarchal chair from its position at the foot of the long dining table.

She heaved the chair at the man as he stepped into the room, the chair striking him high in the chest, knocking him backwards and throwing him off balance. This was Triela's only chance; she was out of ammo and out of time.

Charging forward right behind the thrown chair, Triela launched her entire body into a single, full-armed punch to the man's stomach. He instantly doubled over, grunting in pain, folding himself around her hand.

And that was it.

Stunned, Triela blinked in disbelief. Her punch should have torn clean through the man's stomach, or at the very least ruptured every vital organ in his abdomen. Instead, he only looked mildly pained and was already recovering from the blow.

Panicking at the severely depleted strength her loss of blood had left her with, Triela was forced to once again switch tactics.

Feinting back, she allowed the man to lash out at her with the butt of his UMP in an effort to force her back far enough for him to bring his weapon to bear. Instead, she ducked under the swing, quickly circling around behind him. As she did do, she reached out with her left hand, gripping him by the wrist and giving it a twisting pull. There was still enough strength left in her enhanced synthetic muscles to pull the man from his feet, toppling him to the ground.

Continuing to twist his arm, Triela forced his wrist behind his back and pulled up sharply. There was a slight pop as his shoulder was suddenly and painfully wrenched from its socket. Immediately Triela followed that up by dropping down on top of him, her knees pressing down forcibly against his spine both above and below his shoulder blade.

The man struggled against her grasp, despite the pain he was surely in. Triela simply continued to apply lateral pressure to the man's shoulder, the downward force of her knees on his spine eventually snapping his collar bone with enough force to dislodge and shift his entire ribcage. Finally, Triela rose up and, her vision blurring to the point where she could barely make out his crumpled form, brought her foot down with all the strength she could muster, stomping down on the back of his neck, instantly snapping his spine.

Panting, her whole body trembling, Triela managed two staggering steps before her legs folded beneath her, spilling her to the ground. With a monumental effort, she forced herself up into a sitting position, propping herself up against the wall of the hallway.

The sound of running from directly above her made Triela look up, tears beginning to well up in her eyes again. _Why won't they just go aware and die!_ The physical effort of pushing herself far and beyond her limits, coupled with the monumental emotional strain of having come within a hair's-breadth of death, not to mention the still throbbing agony casting her mind in a hazy fog that threatened to pull her down into unconsciousness, was starting to prove too much for her to handle. Not even her rematch with Pinocchio, who she had once viewed as her arch-rival had proven so severe a test of her stamina and mental and physical fortitude.

Pawing at her the injured right side of her chest, Triela fumbled with the underarm holster holding her SIG P232. She couldn't make her fingers work the way they were supposed to, and they kept slipping on the blood-slicked grip. _God dammit, you stupid piece of junk body, work! Work damn you!_ She screamed silently, raging against herself and her pathetic helplessness.

Finally, feelings of satisfied triumph blooming within her, she managed to close her hand around the tiny pistol and pull it free. Twisting, she took careful aim, waiting for precisely the right moment. She would likely only get one shot.

Her arm trembled so badly that the gun rattled in her grip, the tip bobbing up and down unsteadily. When the tall, thin shadowy form stepped into sight, she squeezed the trigger, feeling the bullet tear itself free from the barrel.

The man reacted with alarmingly sharp reflexes, pulling back as soon as she fired, not that it would have mattered. Triela had grown so weak that she couldn't even hold up the weight of her own hand. The almost non-existence recoil force of the P232 had still proven enough to buck the pistol in her hand, throwing her aim wildly off kilter. The bullet buried itself in the ceiling, more than two feet short of the doorway.

Triela gritted her teeth, bracing her forearm against her chest to help steady her aim, ready to try again the next time the man attempted to step out from the stairwell.

"Triela, hold your fire, it's us!"

Hillshire!

Triela felt a wave of nausea sweep through as she realized that she had tried to shoot her handler. She could feel her mind seizing up, unable to cope with the conflicting emotions tumbling through her, jumbled up with the reactions her conditioning was having at the prospect of having attempted to kill her own handler. She could taste bile in the back of her throat and her whole body began to tremble with increasing force, clear signs of a rapidly approaching epileptic fit induced by her conditioning programming; a final failsafe designed to effectively shut her off in the event of a potentially lethal conflict between emotions and programming.

In an instant, Hillshire was there before her, knelt down in the pool of blood that had started to spread underneath her. His eyes reflected the horrified shock he felt at the sight of her. She was a mangled mess. In all of the five years they'd been partners, Hillshire couldn't ever recall seeing her as badly busted up as she was now. The only thing to compare was when he'd found her fluttering upon the knife-blade edge of life and death in that warehouse in Amsterdam. Nightmares of the fateful night still came back to haunt him on occasion.

"Hillshire, I…I tried to…to k-kill you," she stammered, fighting valiantly through the pain and debilitating tremors wracking her.

"It wasn't your fault, Triela, it was mine. I made a stupid, rookie mistake: I should never have stepped into your line of fire without announcing myself first. I am the one to blame, not you."

"But…I almost…shot you. You would have…been…killed."

"But I wasn't Triela, I'm fine. And you wouldn't have killed me. I'm wearing a ballistics vest, remember? I would have barely even felt that tiny nine-mill round. Besides," Hillshire said, cracking a thin smile in a desperate attempt at humour to try and lighten the mood. "I've become rather light on my feet, thanks to all the time I spend chasing after you, trying to keep you out of trouble."

"But…but I…I…" Her words were choked off by sporadic convulsions and wracking sobs. Tears streamed down her blood and dirt caked face, her shining, deep blue eyes bulging with frantic anxiety.

It wasn't working. The conditioning programming had dug its claws too deeply into her mind, and she couldn't shake herself loose. Hillshire reasoned that if he didn't do something desperate and fast, she would be in full system-lock in a matter of seconds.

Reaching out, he placed a comforting hand on her cheek, his thumb gently caressing her face. Instantly her eyes snapped back into focus, her gaze locking onto his own. He could see her darkly tanned skin heating as she blushed furiously, her lips parting slightly in shock at the sudden, tender, almost intimate contact.

He stared into her bright blue eyes, making certain that she was focused on him, and conscious of what he was saying. "Triela, I am fine. I made a mistake. You. Did. Fine."

"I did?" she whispered, her voice barely audible.

"Yes, you did. You provided enough of a distraction down here that the Padanians who came up looking for us weren't able to focus properly. Because of you, we were able to cut our way through them and reach you. Thanks to you, we're all alive and safe."

Finally his words of comfort and encouragement sank in past the conditioning, and she visibly relaxed against the wall, the tremors quickly subsiding. He gave a deep, shuddering sigh of relief, Hillshire himself also visibly relaxing.

"Now then, how badly are you hurt?"

"I…I don't know. Pretty bad. One of them blew a hole clean through my shoulder. Completely shredded my right lung. I can't move my right arm, either."

"Your leg is bleeding too. How bad is that?"

"Just a scratch." Hillshire nodded, satisfied with her self-diagnosis. The bullet wound to her face, he could also see, was only superficial. Just a little cosmetic work and it would be fine. The chest wound though…

"I need to look at your chest wound, see how much damage it did." She nodded stiffly, likely struggling to stay conscious in the face of the still profound amount of pain she was in.

Gently pushing Triela's overcoat open, Hillshire gripped the collar of her shirt in both hands and quickly tore it open, the buttons popping and flying off erratically in all directions.

The entire right side of her torso was drenched in blood, the left side slicked with sweat. Her chest heaved with each rapid, fluttering breath. Hillshire swallowed a curse, gazing at the mangled, pulpy mess that was the entire right side of her body. He pulled aside the tattered remains of her sports-bra to get a better look at all the damage, and shook his head in amazement. How was she still conscious?

Her right breast was almost completely gone, only the nipple clinging to a ragged flap of skin that hung down against her chest remaining. Her entire right side was lumpy and disfigured; likely every single rib on that side broken or shattered. Another bullet wound had left a neat, perfectly round hole in her midriff, a couple of inches to the left of her navel. The synthetic skin was slightly charred around the edges of the wound, indicating a close proximity shot. She hadn't mentioned it when listing off her injuries. No doubt she hadn't even felt it, and didn't know it was there.

Reaching behind him, Hillshire pulled out an emergency first aid kit and began to pull out every package of sterilized gauze inside. Tearing the packages open, he stuffed the gauze into the gaping hole; forcing it in as far as he felt he could safely push it.

So focused on his task, Hillshire was, that he didn't notice Guise's presence until the other man handed him the sterile gauzes from his own first aid kit. Hillshire nodded his thanks, sparing only enough time for that single gesture before returning his full attention to Triela. He did notice that Henrietta was hovering around the both of them, her face painted with nervous fright and worry for her friend.

"Hillshire?"

He wasn't sure he'd heard her at first, her voice was so faint. She had to repeat herself twice more before he looked, meeting her gaze.

"I won."

"What?"

"I won. The body count; I got eight more. That means I beat 'Etta. Looks like I'm still the queen." She seemed to pass out then, her head slumping slightly to the side.

Hillshire stared at her, baffled beyond words. She actually _had_ been jealous of Henrietta.

"Victor, I called in our situation to Jean, to give him a head's up. There should be a medivac van waiting for you."

"Thank Giuseppe."

When Triela's chest wound was finally packed and bound to his liking, Hillshire gently closed her coat over top, allowing the girl to maintain at least some scrap of her dignity and modesty. Her eyes popped open though when he began to slip one arm beneath her knees, his other arm slipping around her shoulders.

"Hillshire, what…what are you doing?" She struggled lightly in his gentle grasp, her face beginning to darken in embarrassment again.

"Picking you up. The fighting seems to be dying down and I need to get you to the rendezvous point before it gets too intense to risk crossing the compound."

"Well there's nothing wrong with my legs; I can walk there on my own."

Hillshire frowned down at her in disapproval. As much as Triela was to be commented for her sheer brute force determination and resilience to keep pressing on despite whatever obstacle barred her path, Hillshire had no patience to deal with her stubborn pride and sense of daring bravado. "You can barely keep yourself conscious for more then a few minutes at a time. Now don't be stubborn and foolish, Triela."

"I weight like, eighty kilos, Hillshire. You _can't_ pick me up. I'm too heavy"

Despite her protests, and her weak struggling, Hillshire was able to lift her clear of the floor, only needing a moment to adjust himself, shifting her weight around to balance the load.

As they were preparing to leave, Henrietta stepped up to Hillshire, her big, brown, liquid eyes shimmering with unshed tears. "Here Triela, I think you must have dropped this." Gingerly, she set Triela's discarded P7 in the older girl's lap.

Triela managed a thin smile for her younger counterpart. "Thanks 'Etta, I appreciate it." Then, Guise and Henrietta leading the way; Guise with Triela's Winchester M97 slung over his shoulder, the small group made their way out of the villa, and into the compound, where the night's shadowy darkness had begun to reclaim the landscape. During the course of their respective battles, three of the five watch towers had been demolished, courtesy of several more of Agapita's precision-placed mortar shells.

Hillshire hung back several paces, allowing Guise and Henrietta to scout slightly further ahead; not only to give the pair time to thoroughly scan the area for hostiles, but also to give he and Triela some privacy. Then, when he deemed there was a respectable distance between the two pairs, Hillshire whispered softly to Triela, his voice calm and even, his words chosen in complete seriousness. "You will _never_ be too heavy for me to carry, Triela. Never."

Triela, her mind hovering on the edge of consciousness, smiled at his softly uttered words, a tingling warmth suffusing her body. Then she slipped under, and fell into a safe, peaceful oblivion.

* * *

Jacob swore under his breath when the flood-lights snapped on, brightening the interior of the warehouse with a harsh white glare. Apparently the Padanians had been more prepared for the agency's raid than anyone had given them credit for. The installation of a second, completely hidden generator unit had caught everyone off guard.

"Sophia, we're getting out of here. Prepare for some heavy fighting; there's bound to be hostiles waiting for us."

The pair headed for the warehouse's main doors, weapons cocked and reloaded. Sophia rushed ahead to take point, her eyes ablaze with a cold ruthlessness that sent a momentary shiver down Jacob's back.

Wending their way through the maze-like towering stacks of crates, Jacob and Sophia were half-way to the doors went they were pulled up short by the sudden sound of glass shattering above them. Looking up, Jacob saw a small metal canister arching through the air towards the ground in front of them, a thin, spiralling plume of smoke trailing behind.

Before Jacob could open his mouth, Sophia was darting forward. With a burst of speed she reached the falling smoke grenade while it was still a few feet in the air. Lashing out with one foot, she caught the canister perfectly, kicking it back up into the air. The grenade sailed upwards, smashing out through the same window it had been thrown in from.

Unfortunately, knowing that the even momentary delay would have given the Padanians more time to group up, and that they wouldn't be far behind their attempted gas-attack, Jacob gave the order to pull back, and take up defensive positions.

Dimly Jacob mused that the very bait that had lured the agency into launching this raid would very soon be his and Sophia's biggest advantage. The numerous stacks of crates would make it very difficult for the Padanians to co-ordinate an effective assault, giving the pair of them plenty of places to dart and hide. And the fact that the crates were all packed full of sandbags only made the stacks even better defensive fortifications.

Taking up a position that gave him an angled view of the warehouse's front door, Jacob knelt down and brought his C8 carbine to his shoulder. He could just see Sophia, positioned a dozen feet to his right. Knelt down near the top of stack, she'd chosen a spot that gave her a clear line of fire at the hatch leading to the warehouse roof. Jacob made a mental note to congratulate her for her foresight afterwards. He'd forgotten about the roof hatch, and if they could make us of it, then so could Padania.

The pair didn't have long to wait, as the first gunmen charged into the warehouse less than a minute after the failed attempt to smoke them out. Jacob's first three-round burst immediately brought down the first man, and then the battle was joined.

The next man to enter the warehouse announced his entrance with a sweeping spray of bullets, forcing Jacob back behind cover. The air was filled with the hollow, echoing thud as the high calibre rifle rounds impacted the wooden crates. Jacob could just make out the sound of Sophia returning fire at more Padanians dropping down from the roof. By the numerous barking cries of pain floating from that corner of the warehouse, he knew that she was proving more than effective at keeping them bottled up.

Fitting one of his five remaining grenade cartridges into the under-slung barrel of the H&K AG-C grenade launcher attached to his C8, Jacob waited until the hail of covering-fire subsided and then poked back out from behind cover. Taking quick aim, he squeezed the trigger and watched as the grenade shot forward.

As soon as the grenade was away he pulled himself back behind the crate, listening with grim satisfaction to the echoing, rattling _boom_ and screams of pain as it exploded.

Leaning back out, Jacob fired off four rapid bursts that ripped through two more men, painting the heavy steel door and wall with splattering streaks of their blood. He also saw that an additional three men had been felled by his grenade. At least three more men had made it safely into the building though and they immediately began to return fire, once again forcing Jacob back, behind cover.

Glancing over, he saw Sophia firing madly, splitting her attention between both entrances. He heard another man near to main door fall to her precision accuracy. She was forced to switch back to the roof hatch as more gunmen began to leap through.

Jacob continued to dart in and out from behind cover, exchanging fire with now half-a-dozen Padanians that had managed to slip inside. Taking up defensive positions of their own, it was quickly becoming impossible to dislodge them.

Launching a second grenade towards the open door, Jacob scored two more kills. A glancing blow to his upper arm drew a painful growl from him, and he ducked back behind his rapidly deteriorating crate. After several dozen bullet impacts, the crate's side was completely chewed up and falling apart in large, splintered chunks. The sandbags within had begun to fall out, nearly a dozen of them equally chewed up and sending piles of fine-grit sand spreading across the floor.

Bullets began tearing all the way through the crate, some smashing out chunks less than a foot over Jacob's head. It wouldn't be long before he would be forced to move.

Jacob reached up to key his radio, sending a quick message to Sophia. "Sophia, give me some covering fire; I'm not going to last much longer where I'm at."

"Copy that, Jacob."

Within seconds the air around the main doors was filled with bullets tearing through everything in their path. Two more gunmen fell to Sophia's brutal assault, one man's head practically disintegrating as three rounds impacted the side of his face, blowing out the back of his head in a shower of blood, bone chips and brain matter.

Jacob slowly began backup up, body held at a low crouch. He kept his carbine trained on the vicinity of the main door, firing off the occasional burst when one of the Padanians grew too bold.

His arm throbbed painfully from the shallow graze, but he ignored it, pushing the sensation to the back of his mind. He would worry about the relatively minor wound later. At the moment he was more concerned with his and Sophia's survival.

Slipping back through the narrow alleys between the stacked crates, Jacob almost didn't see the man running along the cat-walk overhead until it was too late. Managing to put the first round through the man's thigh, causing him to stagger and fumble his weapon, Jacob put his next three shots dead-center in the man's chest.

Two more gunmen suddenly appeared around the corner of a stack to Jacob's left, both falling almost instantly to a full-auto spray.

Ejecting the spent clip, Jacob slapped home a fresh one and continued on. More and more Padania gunmen were pouring into the warehouse, eventually forcing Sophia to abandon her perch. She leapt across the narrow gap, twisting to fire at one man trying to dash around the catwalk to flank her as she did so.

She saw her handler Jacob fell the two men who had nearly succeeded in ambushing him and she adjusted course to take up a new position closer to him, still up on top of the stacked crates.

Desperately the pair continued to tear into the slowly closing ranks of terrorists. As the minutes ticked by, they were both forced to once again abandon their positions, falling back to near the warehouse's eastern wall.

Jacob slapped in another fresh clip, cocking the arming lever to chamber the first round and immediately firing into a group of three men who darted forward in a brash attempt to overwhelm him.

From her position at his side, Sophia ducked down under a hail of bullets that answered her own burst of rounds. Blood was running freely down her arm from a direct hit, though she barely acknowledged the wound, or the pain it was causing. Jacob felt a pang of fear for her. Her body was equipped with far less extensive body armouring as her elder, first generation sisters were. Her head and upper torso could withstand a few hits from standard nine-mill handgun bullets, but anything bigger than that, or even after more then half-a-dozen of those, and her armour would be penetrated, risking serious physical damage.

She glanced over at him, her face tight and strained from the effort of ignoring the pain in her arm, as well as the mounting stress of the situation. "I don't suppose we could use some of our demolition charges to clear some of them out?"

Jacob shook his head, making her frown in disappointment. "No chance. The charges are all linked to a common receiver frequency. If we blow one of them, then we blow all of them. I'm not ready to go down in a final "blaze of glory" just yet." She nodded her head, understanding and then calmly proceeded to turn back and pump six rounds into yet another gunman.

Minutes before, Jacob had radioed in to Jean, reporting their situation. Hopefully they would only have to hold out for a few more minutes before the back-up _fratellos_ arrived and could cut off the rest of the Padanian reinforcements and start helping him and Sophia clear out the ones inside.

Sophia called out beside him suddenly, a note worry in her voice. "Jacob, I'm almost out of ammo."

He shot a quick glance over at her, pausing to fire at another gunman, who darted quickly back, out of the way. "How much do you have left?" His own ammunition stock was running dangerously low as well; only one spare clip remained after the one he was currently on.

"This is my last clip. I think we should start trying to recover the Padania guys' weapons and ammo. There certainly seems to be plenty of _them_."

"Good idea. Give me a few seconds." She took up a covering-fire position while Jacob ducked down, loading in his last grenade canister. Thrusting the barrel up, over the edge of the crate, he launched the canister blindly, not really caring if he hit anyone or not.

When the grenade detonated, smashing and ripping apart several more crates, Jacob immediately waved Sophia back. Taking point, she set out ahead of him, carefully weaving between the crates. Her head swivelled constantly, eyes scanning the catwalk above as well as every nook and cranny they passed for Padanians trying to sneak around.

Following several feet behind her, Jacob maintained a careful watch on their back trail, keeping anyone from creeping in too close. He managed to kill two more terrorists this way, both attempting to approach from atop the catwalk above.

Jacob spun at the sound of a high-pitched, squealing yelp of pain, finding Sophia down on the ground, her right leg oozing blood and hydraulic fluid from a high-calibre bullet wound that had impacted her several inches above the knee.

Spotting the shooter responsible, Jacob fired a vicious, retaliatory burst that tore through the man's chest and abdomen. Spurting blood, the man dropped and was still. He then rushed up beside Sophia and, grabbing her by the back of her collar, dragged her across the floor until they were both out of sight and relatively safe.

Sophia moaned, tears welling up in her soft, hazel-coloured eyes. "Oh God, Jacob it hurts!" Not wanting to waste time with words, Jacob ran his fingers over her leg, testing the wound. She howled in agony the minute his fingers touched the wound itself, her whole body jerking hard enough to throw him off balance.

The odd, unnatural lump in her thigh told him that the bullet had broken her femur, which was now jutting against the skin. He told Sophia as much, who simply nodded and moaned in response. "I need to give you a full conditioning dose. It should completely numb the pain. You ready?"

"Yes, just do it!"

Working frantically, Jacob pulled out the pen-sized auto-injector loaded with conditioning serum. Biting off the protective cap, he hiked her skirt up around her hips and pulled her black wool tights down far enough to expose the joint where her leg met her hip and jammed the injector into the thin crease of skin. Instantly he felt the injector's contents discharge into her circulatory system, the conditioning drugs roaring through her veins with blinding speed.

Almost immediately the effects became noticeable, as Sophia gasped in shock, her body arching forcefully off the ground. Her eyes rolled back in her head, her mouth falling open as she gave one single, powerful shudder before settling back down.

Her eyes fluttered open, bearing a glazed, almost vacant look to them. Her breathing was once again smooth and even, the pain completely forgotten in her mind. With a single, fluid motion, she hauled herself back to her feet, leaning against the crate for stability, as her broken leg was still unable to support her, and fired a single round, straight through the head of an encroaching gunman. Planting the bullet square between his eyes the man slumped straight down in a heap, the crate behind him now bearing a broad circular splatter of blood and brains.

"You okay, Sophia?" Jacob asked, giving her a quick look over to check for any other minor wounds.

"Yes sir." Jacob winced at the dead, emotionless sound of her voice. Even when in the grips of full-on "combat mode", she still retained enough human personality and presence to feel and act like a normal person; albeit an almost unnaturally calm one. Now, her voice was almost mechanically monotonous and devoid of any emotion. The mind and personality of the girl within had been completely and utterly subdued and repressed. Jacob hated hearing her sound like that. It both scared and saddened him.

Picking her targets with cold precision, Sophia continued to put bullet after bullet into one terrorist after another with unerring accuracy. Each time, she only ever needed a single shot to put them down for good. Every round found its mark in the center of a chest, where it didn't punch through a head, smashing out the back in a grisly shower of bloody gore.

Despite the terrifying efficacy of the ruthless murder-machine Sophia had become, the sheer weight of numbers was still proving too much for the pair to handle on their own. Jacob could feel sweat pouring off of him; the ebb and flow of numerous surges of adrenaline leaving his whole body trembling with the effort of maintaining the focus and concentration needed to stay alive.

He grunted and stumbled slightly as a 7.62mm round slammed into the shoulder of his ballistics vest. The steel-backed Kevlar weave absorbed most of the impact force, keeping the shock-wave from collapsing his lung, but the bullet still managed to penetrate far enough through to punch into his shoulder itself.

"This is relief team Gamma to Echo team, how you holding out in there, Jacob?" Relief surged through Jacob at the sudden sound of Elio Alboreto's voice. _It's about damn time,_ Jacob growled to himself.

"Me and Sophia are both wounded and almost out of ammo; we would definitely appreciate you pulling some of these guys off our asses."

"Not a problem Jacob, we're on our way."

Feeling as if the nightmare that the night had turned into was almost over, Jacob heaved a sigh of relief, setting aside his now completely spent C8 and drawing his SIG P226 combat variant sidearm.

He put two nine-millimetre slugs into the chest of a gunman approaching from the right, flicking his aim to the side slightly to put three more bullets into yet another gunman creeping around from atop one of the crate stacks.

Beside him, Sophia fired off the last of her rifle rounds. With almost blurring speed she drew her own sidearm, a compact SIG P238 and immediately squeezed off two shots that slammed into the foreheads of two separate Padania terrorists.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jacob spotted another Padanian creeping around up on the catwalk, aiming to get behind them. Spinning, he aimed and fired off three more rounds. The first went wide, ricocheting off the wall behind. The other two shots were dead on the mark, tearing through the man's chest, shredding his heart and killing him with only a garbled groan of pain to accompany his sudden demise.

Jacob was already turning back to where several more Padania terrorists were approaching, when he suddenly froze. The man he had just killed was still slumping to the ground, but had fallen far enough to reveal a second man that had been hiding behind, wielding what appeared to be an HK417 battle rifle, configured with the twenty-inch "marksman" barrel. Jacob felt an icy cold spear of dread shear through his chest, paralyzing his entire body. The last he'd heard was that the new four-seventeen's had just started being mass-produced a few months ago, having finished prototyping trials the previous year. So how in the _hell_ had Padania gotten their hands on some?

_They've got someone on the inside at H&K. Jesus Christ, that's all we need._

Jacob watched in frozen horror as the muzzle-flash of the HK417 erupted with painful slowness from the end of the barrel. He could almost see the 7.62mm bullet streak forward towards him, the air rippling and distorting in its wake.

His heart thundered in his ears; each slow, booming beat reverberating within his mind. Jacob's gaze was locked on that barrel, every agonizing second being the jaws of death encroaching ever close. He could almost feel its icy claws sliding through his skin, piercing his flesh.

As time roared back to normal speed, the explosive report of the rifle buffeted him, echoing with deafening force inside the warehouse, momentarily drowning out and silencing the sounds of all other weapons' fire.

There was a flashing streak that zipped by Jacob's head, inches from his face, followed by a dull, wet _thump_. Numbly, as if he were looking through the eyes of another person, Jacob watched in mute fascination as his hands flexed seemingly of their own accord, fingers pulling tight to squeeze the trigger of his P236. Two, three, four rounds burst free from his side arm.

The first, catching the hidden second gunman in the left hip, staggered him, causing the next two shots in impact several inches higher in the shoulder than intended. The force spun the man around slightly, his recoiling reaction to the sudden pain blossoming in his side and shoulder forcing his back to arch slightly. The final bullet tore through his neck, right in the hollow of his throat.

As the man slowly crumpled to the ground, Jacob felt a profound sense of trembling awe and amazement sweep over him.

He was alive.

Somehow, by some miraculous twisting of fate, the Padanian had missed. It was impossible. The man had been less than thirty feet away. A child could have delivered a fatal shot from that distance. It was purely impossible for him to have missed. And yet…he had.

A single, incredulous bark of laughter escaped his lips and Jacob sank back against the crate behind. "Holy shit. Holy Jesus, fucking, Christ. How the _hell_ am I still alive?"

His attention was suddenly caught by an odd, wet burbling gurgle coming from off to his side. Turning, his mouth dropped open, death's crushing grip latching around his heart. The icy shards of dread returned in an instant with a furious vengeance.

Sophia was sprawled on the ground, her eyes open wide and bulging. Her mouth worked soundless, a thin line of spittle sliding down her jaw. Blood was pumping out in a rapidly spreading pool from the massive hole torn completely through her throat.

"No; oh God, please no. Not again. Not this; not Sophia."

Firing off three hastily-aimed shots that took down one gunman and wounded a second in the arm, Jacob fell to his knees beside Sophia, cradling her upper body in his arms.

Her body twitched slightly, the synthetic muscles in her neck convulsing with the effort of trying to draw air into her lungs. Her arms hung awkwardly at her sides, completely limp. Jacob saw through the ruined tissue that the bullet had blown its way out the back of her neck, shattering the vertebrae and shredding her spinal cord.

"No, no, no, no, no. Sophia come on, please hold on. We're almost out of here. The others are on their way, just another couple of minutes and we'll both be safe. Please Sophia; you've got to hold on."

Jacob struggled to hold back the tears threatening to burst free. In his mind he was torn between both the present and the past. He could hear the continual sounds of gunfire as the Padania gunmen battled with at least one of the reserve _fratellos_. But he could also hear just as clearly the voice of Captain Devon Bradshaw: unit commander of the 3rd JTF2 squad based out of CFB Trenton and Jacob's commanding officer.

Jacob had just finished debriefing after a successful run against Serbian snipers which had bagged him and his partner four kills, when Corporal Fitzpatrick had informed Jacob that the captain was looking for him.

He could still smell the hash browns frying in the mess kitchen. The operation had been a night raid into Sarajevo, and they had just gotten back two hours before dawn.

Stepping into Captain Bradshaw's office, Jacob had been sat down, and then calmly informed that his deployment in Bosnia was being cut short by several weeks. Confused, Jacob had argued against the recall, not wanting to project an image to the rest of the squad that he was being pulled out for some imagined weakness on his part.

The captain had been unyielding however, and month one later, to the day, Jacob stepped off the loading ramp of a C-180 Hercules cargo jet onto the smooth black tarmac of the airfield at CFB Trenton.

Given the clandestine nature of the Joint task Force's combat operations, Jacob had expected the unmarked black sedan waiting for him. What he hadn't expected was to be driven to unit's headquarters on base, with orders to report to Major Alfred Klein, the overall commander of all JTF squads based in Trenton.

He also hadn't been expecting the news that his seven year old son had passed away; drowned in their backyard pool.

Jacob's memories collided as he sated down at Sophia, unable to separate the two incidents in his mind. He could see flashing overlays of Zachariah's beaming, smiling face superimposed over Sophia's vacant, staring one. In his mind, both faces were becoming one. Zachariah and Sophia; his biological child, dead almost twelve years now and his adopted, mechanical replacement child. Both were blurring together.

_Oh God, don't do this to me again. I can't survive this again._

"God damn it Alboreto, you son-of-a-bitch, where the _fuck_ are you?" Jacob screamed into his radio.

"Busy trying to carve a path through all these Padania bastards you let in here, you ungrateful ass," Elio growled angrily. There was a slight pause before Elio continued, his voice suddenly hesitant and subdued. "Oh bollocks. Jacob, what's happened?"

"It's Sophia. She…she's down." Jacob couldn't make himself say any more.

"Damn it. Hang on, we're almost there."

Jacob pressed his hands to Sophia's ruined throat, trying with what could only be described as a naïve futility to hold in the blood gushing out of her. All around them the battle raged as Elio, Marisa and whoever else was with him cut through the Padanians with a bloody, ferocious vengeance.

Strangely though, an almost eerie calm had descended upon the small area surrounding him and Sophia. Had Jacob been in anything even remotely close to being his right mind, he would have noticed that all the Padania members that had pressing down on the pair only seconds before seemed to have pulled back immediately following the shot that had felled Sophia.

Sophia's twitching body suddenly went deathly calm and still in his arms. Immediately noticing the difference, Jacob forced himself to focus on the here-and-now; pulling himself forcefully out of his tangled nightmare of memories to stare down into Sophia's face.

All pain seemed to have leeched out of her, leaving behind an almost peaceful, angelic expression. Her eyes were staring up into his own, unshed tears glistening in the faint light that was able to reach them through the windows.

Her mouth worked to form words, the gaping hole in her throat preventing her from making so much as the slightest sound except for the harsh, spasmodic sucking noise of her lungs continuing in their desperate attempt to draw in air.

Slowly, staring down at her, Jacob was able to discern the words forming on her lips. She seemed to be repeating the same thing over and over again. He struggled to piece together what she was trying to say, knowing with a sinking sense of finality that it was becoming increasingly likely to be the last words she ever said to him.

"J…Jacob."

His name. She was saying his name; he could make that out now. But there was more; more that she was trying with such urgent desperation to communicate to him.

"Jacob…I…I love…you."

The tears threatening to overwhelm him finally broke free, flowing down his slightly rugged face to patter onto Sophia's own pale, flawless cherubic face.

"Oh God Sophia; me…me too kiddo. Now hang on, okay? Elio is almost here. He's going to get us out, and there's going to be a medivac with agency medics waiting to start putting you back together. You're going to be fine Sophia, so just hang on for just a couple more minutes, okay?"

Her mouth closed, lips curling into a faint, satisfied smile of pure contentment. Her final message had been delivered. Jacob knew that she loved him, and she felt at peace in the knowledge that he too, loved her.

Jacob watched as Sophia's eyes slowly closed. With his hand pressed tight to her throat, he could feel her pulse slowing, the streaming fountain of blood slackening in a faint trickle and then stopping completely.

It was several minutes later that the last Padanian fell to a final hail of bullets. Rushing through the blood-soaked, bullet-riddled warehouse; broken, shattered and splintered wooden crates littering the ground in toppled, misshapen stacks with shredded and busted bags of sand spilling their contents everywhere; Elio and Costante, followed closely by their respective cyborg partners Marisa and Nina, made their way to Jacob.

They eventually found him still knelt on the floor with Sophia's cold, lifeless body cradled in his arms. The man seemed lost in a daze, his own body seemingly frozen in place.

Stepping up next to his colleague, Elio reached out hesitantly, strangely uncertain in his movements.

"How come Sophia isn't moving, Elio?"

Wincing slightly at the sudden, tactless comment, Elio had to grit his teeth and force himself to resist cuffing Marisa on the side of her head. Thankfully, Jacob seemed to have not heard her. _Small blessings indeed,_ Elio thought to himself.

Sighing, Elio made himself lay a gentle, sympathetic hand on Jacob's shoulder, feeling the man flinch slightly under his touch. "Jacob lad, we've got to get moving. The sooner we get her to the medics, the sooner they can get to work on her."

There was a long, agonizing pause before Jacob finally roused himself enough to respond. "It doesn't matter. Not anymore."

"We don't know that yet. God knows, Bianchi's people have pulled off some miraculous things in the past. Marisa virtually had her whole chest cavity blown out and they were still able to put her back together."

"Hey, I remember that," the irrepressible little red-head piped up from behind. "That was the first time I got shot, right Elio?"

"Damn it Mari, not now!

"Look Jacob maybe you're right, maybe it _is_ too late to save Sophia; but you won't know for sure until we get her to the medics. And from the look of your shoulder, you've been shot as well, so at the very least we need to get you to the medics."

Finally, Elio's words seemed to penetrate the thick, roiling fog swirling through Jacob's mind, clouding and choking off all thought.

Glancing up at Elio, the older man's faintly lined, bearded face creased with genuine concern, Jacob slowly nodded. "Okay, let's go."

Slipping his arm under Sophia' legs, Jacob rose slowly, struggling as her disproportionately heavy weight settled down on him, sending spears of pain through his injured shoulder. Elio and Costante moved to help him, but he shrugged off their attempts, determined to carry her out on his own.

The medics were waiting for them just outside the warehouse as ordered, a gurney in place with various pieces of field surgical equipment arranged strategically around it. One of the men standing at the ready nodded to Elio in recognition. Elio returned the nod sharply, recognizing the man as being one of the two paramedics that had tended Marisa when she had been shot in Sicily.

Jacob placed Sophia on the gurney with almost reverent care, fingers lingering as they traced a slow, tender path across her brow, smoothing out her bangs and other stray locks of hair that had slipped free from her bun.

The field surgeon leading the medic team stepped up to Sophia, her hands probing the wound, inspecting the damage. She thumbed back the limp, unmoving girl's eyelids, waving a small pen-light over them to test their reactions. She gave a low, depressed sigh, stepping back and pulling off her latex gloves. "No pulse detected, pupils are fixed and dilated. I'm sorry gentlemen, there's nothing we can do; she's gone."

Jacob nodded mutely, his body and mind both numb. He'd already expected that very answer. He'd told Elio as much inside. He waved off the medics as they began to cluster around him, informing him that they needed to look at his shoulder.

"Would you people piss off and give me a minute?" he snapped, his patience worn dangerously thin now that the numbness was beginning to wear off.

Understanding a little about what the younger man was going through, having suffered the same loss with Marina, Marisa's predecessor, Elio shepherded everyone a short distance away, the medics and surgeon squawking and protesting like a gaggle of white-smocked geese being shooed away from their nests.

Jacob stood alone beside Sophia, hand resting on her brow. Leaning down, he placed a tender kiss to her pale, silken skin just below the hairline. "Good-bye Sophia."

* * *

Jean Croce gazed across the broken, smouldering landscape of what an hour ago had been a major Padania training camp. His anger slowly seethed within him, boiling and churning in a firestorm of bottled rage that screamed for release.

Standing just inside and off to the left of the compound's main gates, located at the center of its southern perimeter, Jean's back and side were awash with the overlapping lights of more than a dozen agency and government vehicles. Most of the vehicles arrayed outside the gates where of various makes and models; the personal vehicles belonging to Ferro's clean-up crews.

Once again Jean found himself making a mental note to deliver his personal congratulations of her people's stellar efficiency. Less than five minutes had gone by since the area had been deemed secure enough for them to start working, and already the area was beginning to lose its battle-field appearance.

The remaining vehicles were split between military jeeps and transport trucks, and the unmarked cargo vans that had been converted into makeshift ambulances.

Casting a brief glance behind, Jean watched silently as Victor Hillshire clambered up into the back of one such van, leaning out to assist the medics in loading the gurney bearing Triela into the back.

Stripped down to just her white cotton panties and lightly wrapped in a thin wool blanket for warmth and modesty, Triela's entire upper body was swathed in layer upon layer of pressure bandages and gauze wrappings. Another bandage was taped to the left side of her face, and yet more bandages wound around her stomach and left thigh.

Further on, near the open back of another medivac van, Jean could make out the high-pitched shrieking shouts of two of the girls yelling back and forth at each other.

Hovering protectively next to her handler, Kara was waving her hands in the air menacingly, screaming at an equally upset and irate Agapita. If not for the conditioning of both cyborgs, Jean mused, they would likely have begun gouging each others' eyes out by now.

Laid out on a gurney of his own, Kara's handler Michele fought to calm the tall, lithe half-Japanese girl. The linen sheet draped over Michele's lower body obscured whatever injury the man had suffered.

Standing only a short distance behind and bearing an ill-concealed expression of mirth, Alessandro Ricci watched the proceedings with growing amusement. No doubt he was hoping to see the argument progress to the point of slapping and hair-pulling, perhaps with the added bonus of various articles of clothing being torn from their nubile young bodies.

At Ricci's side, his cyborg Petrushka appeared torn between joining in her handler's amusement and stepping in between her two friends in an attempt to quell the fighting.

Jean frowned slightly at the pair in mild disgust. He had yet to find any evidence of impropriety between the two, regardless of the dogged persistence of rumours claiming that Alessandro was bedding Petra. Unfortunately, with Ricci's espionage background, it was a distinct possibility that the rumours were true and that, however much it galled Jean to admit, even if only to himself, Ricci was simply too good at covering his tracks to get caught.

Turning at the approaching sound of crunching gravel, Jean waited patiently as his younger brother stepped up next to him.

Guise's face was streaked with dirt, his slightly shaggy black hair dishevelled and his combat fatigues dirtied and torn.

"I just finished talking with Ferro. According to a preliminary body count she got from her people, we're looking at between sixty to seventy Padania members killed."

Jean frowned in thought, casting his gaze out across the compound in another piercing, critical sweep. "Sixty to seventy? I counted at least twice that as her people where carrying out the bodies. Where the hell does she claim _they_ came from?"

"Sixty to seventy _Padanians_ Jean," Guise corrected gently. "The rest are confirmed as foreign nationals. A good number of them are Eastern European, the rest probably Somalis or thereabouts."

"Why would Padania be recruiting foreigners into their ranks? That's completely against their publically acknowledge ideology. Part of what they're fighting for is the expulsion of all foreigners from Italian soil."

"My guess is they're not recruiting them. Just hiring them."

"Mercenaries?"

Guise nodded, folding his arms across his broad chest and turning to gaze out across the compound. "That would be the logical assumption."

"Good. That give's us at least some measure of a silver lining to work with."

Guise frowned down at his elder brother, confused by the sentiment. "How can you call that a "silver lining" Jean? Up until now, we've counted on Padania's recruiting to be limited to sympathizers among our own citizens.

"If they're pulling in outside contractors, not only will their potential numbers swell beyond out ability to deal with, but we will have next to no way of tracking these people."

"Fanatical idealists need only to be asked to sacrifice their lives to a cause Guise. Mercenaries need to be _paid_ to do so."

A light of understanding bloomed suddenly in Guise's eyes, his mouth falling open as he tilted his head slightly back, sighing softly. "I see what you're getting at. Keep putting pressure on Padania's financial backers and before long they won't be able to afford their new mercenary soldiers."

"And their army will virtually melt away overnight," Jean finished, a faint grin, almost feral in its cruel intensity curling the edges of his thin-lipped mouth.

"Well, either way it's still a rather thin lining, considering what it cost us."

"How thin?"

"You mean, what were our losses?"

Jean nodded impatiently in affirmation.

"Well, as I'm sure you saw yourself, Triela took what's probably going to go on record as the worst beating any of our girls have ever suffered. She'll live, but it's going to be weeks before she's combat-ready again.

"Henrietta only suffered a few minor cuts and scrapes.

"Kara, Petra and Chiara all took numerous superficial bullet and shrapnel wounds. They'll likely all need some minor surgery to replace damaged muscle tissue as well as skin repair, but I can't see any of them needing to even stay overnight in the hospital.

"I haven't heard anything back yet from Jacob about Sophia, but from what I overheard, it sounds like she's in almost as bad of shape as Triela. So that's two girls that will be off the mission-list for at least a month.

"Elio and Costante would have reported whether either of their girls were injured, so I'm inclined to believe Marisa and Nina are both fine.

"That only leaves you and Rico."

"Rico's fine," Jean said simply.

At the sound of her name, the short, boyishly slim blonde girl perked up from her spot at Jean's back. Blinking owlishly, her sky-blue eyes wide and shining in the pale moonlight, Rico offered guise a beaming smile,

"I got to kill _five_ Padania terrorists, Mr. Croce!" she chirped happily. "It was so much fun because normally I only get to use my rifle to kill people and that's only when another team is having trouble and they need me to snipe someone in the head."

Jean turned sharply to his cyborg, snapping at her in irritation. "Be quiet, Rico."

"Oh, uh…yes sir," she chirped again, equally as happy as before, despite the rebuke. She settled back on her heels, hands clasped loosely behind her back, head cocked slightly to one side like a small bird watching something it found curious.

Guise offered Rico a warm smile of his own in return, feeling the instinctual need to offer a kind, positive word in the face of his elder brother's callous admonishment. "Well congratulations, Rico. I'm sure Jean must be very proud of you for what you did to help the rest of us out."

Jean fixed Guise with a fierce, disapproving scowl; a look to which the younger Croce let slide right off of him, returning Jean's glare with a calm, steady look of his own.

"Of course Mr. Croce; Jean is always proud of me when I get to kill people for him."

"Okay, that's enough," Jean barked, his patience with the exchange wearing thin. "Guise, what about the other handlers? What kind of injuries did we suffer?"

"Among the handlers? Right now it looks like Pagani is the only one hurt." Guise allowed a small grin to crease the corners of his mouth, evidence of his own amusement at the situation. "It seems he took a piece of shrapnel from one of Agapita's mortar rounds in the thigh. Alessandro is having a field-day with it. There's already talk about everyone chipping in to buy Michele one of those doughnut-shaped pillows."

"That explains why Kara is trying to chew Agapita's head off," Jean noted quietly. Then, after a moment's pause, added snidely, "And I'm sure Pagani can afford to buy himself a factory or two that specialize in making them."

"Oh, no doubt," Guise replied with a faint chuckle. His voice turned suddenly serious as he picked out a small cluster of people approaching from the warehouse. "It looks like we're about to find out how Jacob and Sophia fared."

Jean turned to follow Guise's gaze, watching silently as the group drew closer. Two medics were wheeling a loaded gurney, Jacob following close behind. The field surgeon flitted and hovered around the dark-skinned man, trying with little success to inspect a bullet wound in Jacob's shoulder.

Trailing several feet behind, another pair of medics lugged the various pieces of equipment that had been brought out. Elio, Costante and their cyborgs brought up the rear of the pack, following at a respectful distance behind the others.

As the group passed by on their way to the medivac vans, Jean's jaw tightened reflexively upon seeing the small, child-sized form enshrouded beneath a crisp white sheet on the gurney.

"Oh my God," Guise whispered softly in shock.

Guise's quiet words brought Jacob up short, and he turned his head slightly to stare over at the two brothers. The taller, younger Croce bore an expression of pained sympathy, his dark hair and fatigues mussed up from his involvement in the fierce fighting.

The slightly shorter, elder brother stood mutely, his cold hard face impassive. His soft blue eyes betrayed nothing of whatever emotions he felt within. In stark contrast to Guise's dishevelled look, Jean's short-cropped blonde hair was perfectly combed, not a single strand out of place. His pale grey Armani suit was impeccably clean and crisp, without so much as a speck of dust or dirt anywhere on it.

Jacob felt his blood boiling within him, irrepressible rage surging to the surface. Before he knew what he was doing, he was striding across the narrow gravel track leading out of the compound towards the pair of fellow handlers.

Guise opened his mouth to offer words of commiseration, but before he could even begin, Jacob reached them, his rage exploding with violent force.

His tightly clenched fist snapped out with blinding speed, catching Jean square in the jaw, forcing the man to stagger back several paces. Blood began to ooze from a split lip, his jaw immediately beginning to swell.

Guise's mouth dropped open in shock and alarm. Elio and Costante cursed and rushed up to try and prevent the confrontation from progressing any further.

"You son of a bitch," Jacob growled furiously, taking a single menacing step forward. Before he'd even completed that first step, however, Rico burst forward in a flash of movement, putting herself between the two men, her CZ-75 pistol drawn and levelled at Jacob's head.

Her eyes were cold and hard, Rico's face frozen in an emotionless mask. Her finger was on the trigger and tightly squeezed, only a hair's-breadth away from firing.

Glaring down at Rico, rather than feel the chill of her ruthless gaze, Jacob only felt his anger surge even higher. Looking back up to meet Jean's own cold, hard glare, Jacob felt himself trembling with the effort of holding himself back. "Real classy Jean, letting yourself hide behind your little bitch."

Seething with his own barely suppressed rage, Jean placed a restraining hand on Rico's shoulder. "Stand down, Rico."

"But Jean, he…"

"Stand down, now!"

Blinking in surprise, Rico reluctantly holstered her pistol and withdrew several paces to once again take up her place behind her handler.

"If you have something to say to me Mehrandish, than by all means, do so."

"This is your fault, Jean! You were in charge of organizing this whole operation; you should have known that the intel was bad. Sophia is dead because you screwed this up!"

"Sophia is dead?" Rico asked suddenly from behind Jean, eyes blinking in shock.

"Shut up, Rico," Jean snapped fiercely. Turning back, he continued on, addressing Jacob. "You think I don't know all that?"

"I…what?" Jacob stammered, his anger faltering slightly at the completely unexpected comment.

"You are absolutely right Jacob, this is _entirely_ my fault," Jean said in the same calm, measured tone, not a hint of anger or even regret straining his voice. "I was in charge of reviewing all the surveillance and reconnaissance information. I put the operation together. I gave the order that sent all of you in.

"The simple fact is Jacob, that whether there was any way I could have foreseen the ambush Padania had waiting for us or not, as the agency's senior field commander, it is still my fault when something goes wrong. I am fully aware of that fact.

"So I apologise if I ruined what was no doubt a masterfully crafted and carefully rehearsed speech of self-righteous indignation, but unless you have something original to add to what I already know, stop wasting my time.

"And let the damned surgeon take a look at your arm before it gets infected and they end up having to cut it off."

Before Jacob could offer so much as a single word in rebuke, Jean turned and calmly stalked off, Rico right on his heels. She twisted her head back to glance over her shoulder at him, her eyes blinking slowly, still devoid of any emotion besides a mild, bird-like curiosity.

Guise remained for several moments, his face creased with genuine sympathy towards Jacob. He offered the other man a quick apologetic look, before turning to follow after his brother. That left Jacob standing on his own, his anger draining out of him, leaving him once again feeling empty and alone.

Catching up to his brother, Guise placed a restraining hand on Jean's arm, pulling the man to a stop. Stepping around to confront him, Guise frowned in clear disapproval. "That was rather harsh Jean. Granted, he was out of line, hitting you, but that still didn't give you call to tear him down like that. For God's sake Jean, he just lost his cyborg! He and Sophia were as close to each other as Henrietta and I are." He looked away then, suddenly uncomfortable. "I don't even want to _think_ about how I would react if she were suddenly killed in battle."

Jean remained silent throughout his brother's speech, waiting several moments before finally replying. "We have a leak in the agency."

"That's all you have to say?" Guise snapped, starting to grow upset and irritated at his brother's callousness.

"What do you want me to say, Guise?" Jean snapped, anger crackling at the edges of his voice, his seething fury beginning to break through now that it was just the pair of them alone. "They're cyborgs. Their entire purpose in life is to fight and die for us. It's what they're built to do.

"I'm not paid to babysit weepy, weak-willed men who should know better than to fall apart when what is an accepted, even expected scenario comes around and their cyborg ends up dead in battle.

"Sophia is hardly our first combat loss and she'll hardly be our last."

Guise glared down at his brother, anger beginning to smoulder in his eyes. "That's cold, Jean. Even for you, that's cold."

"What do you expect? It's what I _am_ paid to do: to look at the cold hard facts of the situation and deal with them appropriately. Now as I said, we have a leak in the agency."

"We've had leaks before. Ferro will trace it back to its source, find the mole and deal with them."

"This is different. No-one outside Section Two knew about this raid. The weapons shipment might have been intended as bait to lure us in, but we've dealt with unexpected surprises before, this shouldn't have been any different. But it was."

Slowly, Guise forced his anger at his brother back under control, turning his attention to the problem Jean was describing. He sighed wearily, nodding in agreement. "They were waiting for us. Well prepared, well equipped and well organized.

"I went back to the villa after escorting Hillshire and Triela out and found a hidden entrance to a massive basement complex in the kitchen. It was big enough to hold dozens, maybe even hundreds of men, with supplies to last them several months."

"How far does the complex extend?"

"It probably runs under the whole compound. It was how they ambushed us. They left enough men above to give us a hard enough fight to convince us that we'd won and then they poured out from their secret entrances to surround us.

"The worst part is that I couldn't find so much as a single bullet down there. There was plenty of food, water and medical supplies, but no weapons or ammunition at all."

"Giacomo probably knew we'd end up taking the compound and didn't want to risk any of it being seized when we did. This wasn't simply an ambush: it was a test. He wanted to see how well his people would fare when given the opportunity to fight us on an equal footing."

"That's a disturbing thought."

"Agreed."

The brothers stood together in silence, each deliberating on the long-term implications of the night's disastrous events. Finally, Jean spoke, his voice once again tightly controlled and hard. "Call a meeting together Guise. We need to find the source of this leak and cut it out."

"If the mole is within our own department, then it has to be either one of the medical staff or…" Guise trailed off, realizing suddenly what his brother had really been implying by the comment that no-one outside Section Two had known about the raid.

"Oh my God, you think it's one of the other handlers, don't you?" Jean's cold, silent stare only confirmed it in Guise's mind. He staggered back as if he had been the one struck in the face.

"But…that's impossible! There's no way a Padania sympathizer could have slipped through the agency's screening process."

"Then someone decided to switch sides after they were recruited. Either way, the traitor is one of us and I intent to hunt him down."

"Who do we trust with this? You want to call a meeting together, but with who? The traitor could be _anybody_!"

Jean spent several minutes carefully considering the possibilities. Guise was right: the traitor could be _anyone_.

"For now, we keep it between the two of us, Chief Lorenzo, Ferro and Elio."

"Why Elio?" Guise pondered.

"He's an old-school operator. He's been in the business for decades and if he was going to harbour any sympathetic ideologies, then they would have surfaced years ago."

"Okay, I'll pass the word on as soon as we get back to Rome then."

Guise moved off then, heading back towards the gathered vehicles where he'd left Henrietta. Jean watched him leave, slowly breathing in and out in a steady rhythm, calming himself.

When he felt that he had once again mastered his churning anger, he turned to face his cyborg, who looked up at him expectantly, her face completely open with a wide-eyed innocence that Jean still found slightly startling. "Rico."

"Yes Jean?" she replied immediately, perking up at the chance of being given the opportunity to please her handler.

"You heard what Guise and I were talking about?"

"Yes Jean."

"One of the other handlers may be secretly working for Padania. If this is the case, then he may have also found a way to corrupt his cyborg into being able to betray us as well.

"I am giving you a very specific and direct order not to repeat so much as a single word of what you heard here to _anyone_. Not to any of the other cyborgs, not even to Henrietta, understand?"

"Yes Jean."

"Good. Because if I find out you _have_ talked to someone about this, I will put a bullet in your head myself. Understand?"

"Yes Jean." There wasn't the slightest hint of hesitation in her voice in any of her responses, her face still just as open and innocent as before. Jean knew that if it came to it, he _would_ kill her himself to prevent any warning from reaching the prospective traitor. He knew also that if it came to it, Rico would stand there calmly and silently accept the bullet, never flinching or wavering in her devotion to him, even as she died.

He felt a pang of guilt squirm and twist his insides, staring into Rico's bright blue eyes. Not even to his brother would Jean ever admit it, but he was almost as uncomfortable about the prospect of losing Rico in battle as Guise was about losing Henrietta. He certainly wouldn't throw a tantrum the way Jacob had, but still, he _would_ mourn her death.

"Let's go Rico."

"Yes Jean."

Together, the pair slowly made their way back to the gathered vehicles, Jean's mind a silently churning storm of thoughts. He would find the traitor. To protect the agency, its ideals, and everything they fought for, he _would_ find him. And for the costs they had suffered this night, he would reap a firestorm of vengeance down upon his head.

_I will find you and I will kill you. With my bare hands if necessary, you will die._

* * *

Minaka stumbled along the rain-slicked cobblestones of the narrow alley, trembling as another deep, wracking fit of coughs threatened to send her crashing to the ground. Pressing her thin-fingered hand to her mouth to muffle the sound, lest it draw unwanted attention, she continued forward, her bare feet sloshing through puddles that reeked of discarded refuse and human excrement.

Thin, tattered scraps of had once, months ago been her socks still encircled her bony ankles. Her simple cotton dress was little more than a frayed collection of rages, barely held onto her emaciated frame by a few torn, ragged stitches.

Her hair, once a luxurious deep shade of black that had flowed almost to her narrow waist was now a ragged, greasy mess that was chopped off to just above her jaw line. A large crust of dried blood had glued a large patch of her hair to the side of her head. She might have been bothered by the way it itched and pulled at her scalp, but with the profusion of lice crawling across her head, there was hardly any difference between one spot and another.

Staring ahead vacantly, Minaka fought to continue putting one foot in front of the other. A massive bruise to her face that had turned black and yellow had sealed her left eye shut from the swelling, a thin trial of blood from where the skin along her high, prominent cheekbones had split open was beginning to congeal and dry.

Her entire left side was a mass of fiery agony and her other hand was pressed tight to the days-old knife-wound. The thin narrow blade of the butterfly knife had impacted against a rib, digging into the bone and snapping off the very tip, leaving it imbedded in her flesh.

The skin around the suppurating wound was badly inflamed and discoloured, leaking blood and foul-smelling pus down her side. The discolouration, black and dark purple around the wound itself, turning to a lighter, bluish-red nearer the edges, had spread up her ribs to her armpit, down to his hip and around to her navel and spine.

Pulling her hand away from her mouth, Minaka saw spatters of blood mixed with vomit and saliva staining her palm. A soft moan escaped her dry, cracked lips and she weakly wiped the fluids off on her bare thigh.

A long, fraying tear in her tattered dress ran from the hem all the way up to where the material cinched in at her waist, exposing her naked hip.

A chill wind that reeked of old, rotting fish swept in off the waterfront, sending a shiver coursing through her. Thin trailers of a wispy fog began to curl along the ground as night began to fall, swirling as her feet passed through them.

Off in the distance somewhere, a lone dog barked incessantly, the sound echoing and reverberating through the twisting, narrow alleys. Much closer, she could hear the echoing voices of several men as they laughed and shouted raucously. Their hooting calls were punctuated by the occasional popping smash of beer bottles being shattered against the ground and their strange, illegible words were made even harder to understand by the prominent slur of drunkenness.

Through a thickening haze of feverish delirium, Minaka prayed silently that the men would stay away. It had been a similar group of raucous, inebriated men who had attacked her several days ago, two of them pulling her into an alley while a third enthusiastically tore the skirt of her dress to her waist.

Men had dragged her, kicking and screaming feebly to the ground while another reached inside her torn dress to claw her frayed, dirt-encrusted panties off of her, tossing them aside casually.

It had been a man who had stabbed her in the side, after she bit him savagely on the wrist with enough force to feel the crunch of delicate bones grinding together. Stabbed her after she lashed out with one bare foot, catching the man lingering below her in the groin and making him howl in pain and fall to the ground, hands clasped protectively over his crotch.

It had been men who had come to her home, almost three years ago now, calmly informing her father that her mother's gambling debts were due to be paid.

Men who had smashed in her father's face when he demanded that they leave, that he was going to call the police if they didn't.

It was men who had taken her mother, her older sister Chihiro-chan and Minaka herself to a dark, cramped, musty old building with other silently staring women and girls just like them.

Men who had brought them to this strange, unknown foreign land, forcing them all to swallow thick, rubbery bags that had been coated in a foul tasting, slimy substance that had left an awful taste in her mouth.

It had been men who had shot her sister in the chest when Chihiro-chan had refused to co-operate, terrifying her and her mother into compliance.

It had been men who had made her drink that horrid-tasting fluid that had made her violently sick, vomiting noisily until every muscle in her abdomen and chest burned in agony, just so that they could retrieve those limp, ruby bags filled with hundreds of tiny white pills.

And it had been men who had forced her to spend the next two years of her life giving pleasure in the most degrading and humiliating of ways to even more men who came to her, coveting the soft, gentle curves and silken smoothness of her flawless adolescent body.

Minaka suddenly felt her legs beginning to buckle under her. Unable to summon the strength needed to grab the wall next to her for support, she toppled forward, her shoulder striking the edge of an aluminum garbage can with painful, staggering force, knocking it over with a deafening clatter that split the night air.

Twisting as she fell, she landed on a pile of wet, decaying bags of rotting refuse, the paper-thin plastic bags bursting open under her sudden weight, spilling their fetid contents across the cobble-stones and Minaka herself.

Too tired and weak to move, Minaka simply laid there, her breathing harsh and laboured. Each breath was sharp and quick, bringing with it a renewed spear of agony ripping through her chest. Her heart thundered in her ears, beating at a furious, feverous pace.

In the darkening gloom, strange swirling lights burst in Minaka's vision, the opposite wall of the alley swimming and twisting. She felt as if her body were being sucked down a deep chasm and she feared what would happen when she eventually struck the bottom.

Whatever small, rational part of Minaka's mind that yet remained intact and unaffected by the numerous physical, mental and emotional traumas that had been inflicted upon her noted with a strange clarity that she was dying. That small part of her found itself looking forward to death; to the liberating freedom that it would bring to her tortured existence.

But that small glimmer of consciousness, the one that had given her the resolve to store up her courage and her strength, so that it would be ready for her to use when the men guarding her and the other child prostitutes lapsed in their focus, allowing her to snare one of the men's guns and turn it on them, granting her the opportunity to escape along with four other girls, was afraid.

That small part of her continued to struggle. It wasn't ready to die. It told her that she was still too young to give up, that all she had to do was find someone who could help, could take her to a hospital where her injuries could be treated, where she would be fed and given the opportunity to rest and to heal.

But that part of her was dimming, growing weaker with each passing moment.

A single tear rolled free from her undamaged eye, rolling across her cheek and sliding down her small, slightly flattened nose to drip onto her parched lips.

Her mouth opened slightly to let slip a soft, keening sob of despair. "Onee-chan, I'm scared. I don't want to die."

She continued to cry; each sob building upon the last until she trembled and shook from the force. "I miss you so much, onee-chan. Why did you leave me alone? Please, onee-chan I need you. I can't keep fighting by myself."

Something began to shimmer in Minaka's vision: a writhing, warping shadow passing across the wall in front of her. A dark shape came into her field of view and she shrank back, pressing herself into the mangled heap of refuse beneath her in an effort to escape.

"Minaka-chan?"

Minaka's mouth fell open, her one good eye bulging in awe as the dark figure resolved itself in front of her. It was Chihiro! She was alive! Her elder sister was knelt down her front of her, short-cropped black hair with their bright green highlights curled around her thin, softly-rounded face.

Large, dark brown almond-shaped eyes regarded her softly, a faint smile curling the edges of full, pouting lips.

She was wearing a crisp white t-shirt with the stencilled outlines of a black dragon curling up the front over a long-sleeved shirt striped in alternating red and purple bands. Her slightly frayed jeans were form-fitting through the hips and thighs, flaring out just slightly half-way down her calves. The toes of her black and white skateboarding shoes peeked out from under the tattered cuffs of her jeans, their rubber soles squeaking on the wet cobbles.

"O…onee-chan?" Minaka whispered faintly, tears of relief streaming from her eye.

"I'm here, Minaka-chan. It's okay. You're going to be okay."

"Onee-chan, I was so scared. Why did you leave me all alone?"

"I'm sorry Minaka-chan, I really am. But I didn't have a choice. Those bad men forced me to leave you. I couldn't stop them. But you were so brave Minaka-chan; unbelievably brave. You fought back all by yourself and without anybody helping you, you got free. And you helped free other girls just like you. I'm so very, very proud of you Minaka-chan."

Chihiro reached out, resting one hand softly on Minaka's face, sending soothing warmth rippling through her, banishing back the pain and anguish that had gripped her body and mind for so very long.

"Onee-chan?"

"What is it Minaka-chan?"

"I want to go home now."

Chihiro laughed, her voice sweet and lilting, making Minaka smile at the musical sound of it.

"Of course we can. That's why I'm here: to bring you home. Mom and dad are waiting for us. And mom made takoyaki dumplings."

"I love takoyaki," Minaka whispered softly, the sweet warmth radiating from Chihiro's hand on her cheek making her drowsy.

"Yeah, I know; that's why I asked her to make some, just for you."

"I'm so tired onee-chan."

"I know Minaka-chan. It's okay, you can go to sleep if you want. I think you've earned a bit of a rest. Don't worry, I'll look after you now and keep you safe. You just go to sleep, and when you wake up, we'll be back home."

"I love you, onee-chan."

"I love you too, nee-chan."

Minaka felt her eye slide closed, all sensation slowly draining out of her. The small, frantic voice in the back of her mind finally settled and was quiet. A profound sense of comfort and contentment swept over her, billowing her up on a cushion of air. She had finally found peace.

Quinn stared down sadly at the small emaciated figure laid out before her, a faint smile curling the girl's cracked lips in an expression of final, lasting happiness.

Removing her hand, she rose to her feet, the nanocells of her synthetic skin rippling as they returned her to her normal appearance.

"It's a cold, cruel world that forces such a painful and lonely death onto the shoulders of a child," she whispered, shaking her head.

"I can't imagine she's the first you've had to face over the years, milady."

Quinn turned to face the speaker, his gruff, gravely voice soft with sympathy. He was a tall, well-muscled young man with an almost plain, unassuming face. The kind of face that is easily dismissed and soon forgotten.

"No Lucas, she is not the first. It's depressing how many just like her I've seen over the years. The only consolation I have is knowing that the next weaving of their lives into the Pattern will be better."

"Unless of course Reaper is able to seize control of this word, gaining mastery and control over the planet's Gaia."

Quinn shot a fierce glare at the man, her emerald-green eyes blazing with sudden anger. "Then it's a good thing that we're here to prevent that from happening isn't it?" Left trembling slightly under her intense scrutiny, Lucas bowed his head apologetically.

Quinn sighed, turning away from the man. Irritation at her irrational outburst pricked at her, making her scowl. "Well we might as well get on with this."

Kneeling down, she placed one finger to the cold stiff skin of Minaka's forehead, closing her eyes and allowing her mind to reach outward and sweep over the girl's body. She soaked in the information feeding back into her, taking careful note of each precise detail of Minaka's form.

When Quinn felt that she had enough knowledge, she pulled back her finger and sent a silent signal to her nanocells. With another rippling sweep, her appearance changed once again, taking on a perfect, mirror-image copy of the girl laid out before her; every detail precise, down to her tattered clothing and the suppurating gangrenous wound in her side.

Stepping back, she turned to face Lucas again, her thin, bony arms held out to her sides. "Well, how do I look?"

"Like a dirty, half-starved waif standing only moments away from returning to the Mother's embrace milady."

"Good. Make the call."

Pulling a disposable cell phone from the pocket of his thin jacket, Lucas punched in three simple digits before hitting the "call" button.

"Hello? Yes I need an ambulance right away. There's a girl down here and she's badly injured. She's badly starved, and it looks like she's been stabbed." Lucas spoke rapidly into the phone's receiver in fluent Italian, perfectly imitating a natural Napoli accent. Quinn only half-listened to him, her mind withdrawn and focussing on next task facing her.

Reaching inside herself, she called up the internal programming structure of her synthetic brain core. _Access core-codex; initiate program sequence Sapien-Charlie-one._ Instantly her body responded, all the strength flooding out of her in a crashing wave of crushing weakness.

She stumbled at the sudden shift, throwing out her hands to catch herself against the wall and keep from falling to the ground. Her entire left side exploding with mind numbing pain unlike anything she could consciously remember. Her stomach rebelled against the sudden shock and she doubled over, vomiting painfully onto the cobblestoned ground.

"Lady Quinayalyn, are you alright?" Lucas asked, rushing over to her. She waved him back impatiently, struggling to rise from her crouched position.

"I'm fine, Lucas. The pain just caught me off guard, is all. Is everything set?"

"Yes; the ambulance is on its way." He seemed to struggle with himself then, his face twisting with emotional discomfort, his body shifting and fidgeting nervously. "Lady Quinayalyn, I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For allowing myself to be compromised. If I had been able to retain my cover, you wouldn't need to be doing this."

Quinn sighed and shook her head, reassuring the man. "No Lucas, this isn't your fault. What I'm doing is what the Council had ultimately planned to do whether you had remained undetected by Reaper's agents or not. So don't feel guilty. All you did was push up the Council's timetable by a few months."

Lucas nodded his understanding, his crestfallen expression showing that he found little comfort in her words. He was a good man; even if he was a spy.

"There is one thing you can do to make up for it, if you want," she continued, feeling the need to offer the man some opportunity to redeem himself, even if only in his own eyes.

"Of course, anything milady."

"Minaka's body: take it with you when you head back. After everything she's suffered in her short life, the least we can do for her is grant her the final honour and respect of a proper funeral."

"I will see to it personally that she receives the highest of honours, Lady Quinayalyn."

Shifting her position, she moved aside to give Lucas room to stoop down, slipping his arms under Minaka's shoulders and knees, lifting her frail, lifeless body effortlessly.

In the distance and growing louder was the tell-tale wailing siren of the rapidly approaching ambulance. It was time to finish this.

Quinn took her place on the ruptured, stinking pile of garbage, shivering as the damp, cold, reeking mass contacted her pale, sensitive skin. There was a brief flash of light from down beyond her feet as the Rift-gate opened, accompanied by a faint tearing sound and sudden swirling burst of wind as the differing air pressure on each side of the gate quickly shifted and equalized.

"Lady Quinayalyn?"

Quinn glanced down the length of her body at Lucas's call, peering up at the man where he stood on the threshold of the dimensional portal.

"Good luck."

She offered a brief, silent nod in response and then he was gone, the gateway contracting down to a single, silvery point of light, before finally winking out.

Alone, Quinn sighed deeply, wincing as the effort stretched the inflamed, diseased flesh of her side. The ambulance's siren was now almost deafening in her ears as it grew steadily closer.

Steeling herself once more, she again reached into her mind, delving into the deepest recesses of her core-consciousness. _Access core-codex; initiate program sequence Sapien-Charlie-two._

In a sudden flash, she felt everything ripping away from her. Her mind, her memories, they all tumbled away into a gaping black maw. She could feel herself slipping away into that encroaching oblivion, all thought stripped away from her.

Panicking, she struggled to hold on to some piece, some tiny glimmer of her past. Her children. She fought to fix a lasting image of their faces into her mind, struggled to retain some small connection to them as everything else vanished within her.

It was no use. With relentless precision and ruthless efficiency, even those simple images of her son and daughter's shiny faces dimmed and faded in her mind.

As the lights of the ambulance washed over her, and the shouts of the paramedics reached her ears, Quinn felt herself slip over the edge and tumble down into the oblivion waiting for her. But as she fell into unconsciousness, she felt a brief, gentle touch brush across her mind; like a lover's tender caress. She didn't recognize the source of the touch, though its feel seemed somehow familiar. Regardless, she drew warmth and comfort from the momentary contact, a single thought lingering in her mind as she tumbled away.

_I'll be here watching over you. Always._

* * *

Jacob leaned back against the wall as a nurse strode past, pushing an empty wheelchair ahead of her. All around him, up and down the long hall there was a bustle of activity that bespoke of a carefully controlled chaos.

A quiet profusion of numerous voices created an almost solid wall of gently rumbling background noise that was broken and interspersed with the occasional chime and garbled warble of a PA announcement as well as the rare trilling alarm of some distant medical emergency.

Pressed up against the wall, feeling the ambient coolness of the tiles running along the lower half of the hallway in a simple mosaic pattern soak through his thin cotton dress-shirt, Jacob let his head fall back slightly to rest against the smooth glossy surface of the wall's painted upper portion.

Across the hall, another man of around middle-age sat in one of the thinly padded chairs lining the hallway in broken groups of five or six, casually leafing through a magazine.

The man's dark eyes, fine lines just beginning the crease their corners, peered down at the magazine article from behind simple, narrow-rimmed glasses. His short-cropped hair, the colour of roasted chestnuts, was brushed flat and forward against a just slightly wide, well rounded head.

Jacob stuffed his hands into the pockets of his simple, slightly creased dress pants and allowed his gaze to wander beyond the limits of the corridor's drop-ceiling, passing into the infinite expanse of his own tangled thoughts and emotions.

_What the hell am I doing here?_ He wondered idly to himself for perhaps the hundredth time. _Is this really what I want: to be dragged back into the game and have to spend all my time staring down into that bottomless abyss?_

_I must be insane to want to put myself through this again._

_Yeah, but you agreed to come back,_ a small voice inside reminded him, making him frown at the memory.

Jacob swayed slightly atop the rickety barstool, dark-skinned hands wrapped tight around a thick glass tumbler. Chunks of ice tinkled against each other and the sides of the glass as he swirled them around slowly, watching the three-fingers' worth of cheap whisky slosh around within.

The sound of some indistinguishable classic rock song was just barely audible on the pub's ancient, crackling speaker system. At the far end of the bar, a battered old television set was mounted up near the ceiling, a small cluster of the local regulars clustered around to watch the soccer match.

Jacob had never had much interest I the sport and couldn't even begin to guess what teams where playing. Not that he was in a particular mood to care one way or the other, even if he did.

A thick blue haze of smoke curled and flowed in small swirling eddies at each passing breeze and movement. The smoke drifted down to wreath Jacob's head, making his eyes sting and water.

Lifting the glass to his lips, Jacob let the sharp, burning fluid slide down his throat, igniting a scorching fire all the way down his oesophagus that didn't draw so much of a flinch from him.

Setting the glass back down on the bar with slightly more force than he'd intended, Jacob eyed the bartender who shot him a perturbed, frowning glare. Reluctantly he strode over, pulling down the half-empty bottle of scotch from the shelf behind him and refilled Jacob's glass.

Jacob slapped a five-euro note down onto the bar that was quickly swept up, bobbing his head shortly in thanks.

For a time Jacob simply sat staring into his glass, watching as the whiskey and ice cubes swirled and danced.

A creeping numbness was beginning to drag at his limbs, making his movements increasingly uncoordinated. His head swam with a heavy fog that rivalled the one churning slowly above his head.

A small brass bell chimed as the door swung open, a short, stocky man entering and taking up a seat at the bar right next to Jacob. The man wore a suede jacket that, while well-worn, was still impeccably clean and cared for.

"I'll have a beer, please," the man said when the bartender inquired politely, placing his own five-euro note on the counter.

Jacob felt a dry, derisive chuckle bubble up from within, his drunken state preventing him from holding it back. The other man turned to him sharply at the sound, frowning.

"The agency's finally decided to start reeling me back in, eh Marco?" He began chuckling in earnest then, each trembling laugh dripping with scorn. Putting his glass to his lips, Jacob once again tipped it back, draining its burning contents in a single quaff.

"I'm not here to drag you back kicking and screaming, if that's what you're implying," Marco replied after a time, when Jacob's derisive laughter had subsided. "To be honest Jacob, everyone's worried about you. It's been almost four months since the incident and so far the only grieving you've done is to bury yourself under a mountain of empty bottles."

"Ah, so you're my guardian angel then, sent to shepherd me back into the light. How very magnanimous of you."

"Actually," Marco said with a sly grin. "Elio and I tossed a coin to see who would come down here to see you; I lost."

Jacob suddenly burst out laughing in genuine mirth, the unexpected noise startling several other patrons, including the group of regulars by the television, causing them all to glance inquisitively over at the broad-shouldered, darkly-tanned man.

"Well then, while I'm sure I should probably feel offended by that, I certainly find it easier to believe.

"Is that what we've started calling it by the way: the 'incident?' Sophia nearly gets her damn _head_ shot off and it's simply filed away by the agency's archivists as 'an incident?'

"Is that what they called it when Beatrice and Silvia both bought it in Venice, too? Just another 'incident' to be filed away and forgotten?" Jacob felt his anger roaring within him, sending a very different kind of fire pumping through his veins. The ridged designs of the glass tumbler dug into the palm of his hand as he slowly squeezed down on it, fighting back the sudden urge to wrap his hands around someone's throat.

"Jacob calm down," Marco warned quietly. "This is hardly to place to be discussing agency business."

No," he snapped, surging to his feet. "I won't calm down, Marco. It's been four God-damned months! There have been no retaliations, no arrests, not a single _fucking_ lead pointing us to whoever tipped the Padanias off."

"Hey buddy, you want to get your friend out of here before I end up having to call the cops? I think he's had enough anyway."

"Go to Hell, you jumped-up bus boy!" Jacob raged, turning on the bartender. "My money's as good as anyone else's!"

"Come on Jacob, he's right; you've spent enough time pickling your liver for one night." Marco placed a restraining hand on Jacob, attempting to pull the man towards the door.

With a flash of motion Jacob spun, lashing out. His fist connected with Marco's cheek, splitting the skin open below his eye and sending a thin streamer of blood trickling down the side of his face.

"Son of a bitch, that's it: I'm calling the cops," the bartender snapped, heading towards a door that no doubt led to a rear office.

"That won't be necessary," Marco replied calmly, wiping away the blood with one finger.

Picking himself off the floor, Marco grabbed Jacob by the wrist and swung the man around expertly, twisting his arm up behind his back before slamming him face-first down on the bar.

"You going to cooperate Jacob, or am I going to need to break your arm first?"

The numbing effects of the alcohol kept him from feeling the pain of having his face smashed into the thick laminate counter, though his dimly knew that the whole side of his face likely to be bruised and sore in the morning when he eventually sobered up.

Struggling futilely in Marco's expert grasp, Jacob felt his anger flood out of him just as quickly as it had surged in. He stopped trying to break free and nodded mutely in acceptance.

Letting Jacob free, the pair exited the pub, Marco first placing a fifty-euro note on the bar and offering his sincere apologies for Jacob's behaviour.

Outside, Marco and Jacob made their way slowly down the street, both men shivering slightly in a chill, late-March breeze.

Jacob swayed unsteadily as he walked; his head swimming and his vision spinning nauseously. Perhaps he _had_ had more than enough for one night.

His stomach churning, Jacob stumbled up against the wall of a two-story old-styled brick-fronted shop. Lurching forward, he turned into the alley between the shop and a similar building right next to it. Shambling forward several steps, he doubled over and proceeded to empty his stomach onto the ground.

Marco waited patiently at the mouth of the alley, handing Jacob a clean handkerchief when the man finally dragged himself back onto the street proper. "Feeling better?"

"Not really."

"Jacob, you need to come back to work. I know that Lorenzo told you to take as much time as you needed, but at the rate you're going, you'll likely end up dead in a ditch somewhere within another month; two at the most."

"Gee Marco, I'm touched," Jacob replied with evident sarcasm, his words slightly slurred. "I never knew you cared."

"Of course I care. We all care. You're a damn good soldier and an excellent handler. Sophia was one of the best girls the agency had; she was consistently ranking right alongside Triela and Henrietta"

"Oh I get it: just looking to protect the agency's _investment_ in me, eh?"

"You're damn right I am," Marco snapped, catching Jacob off guard with the admission. "But I'm _also_ looking to protect a man who, up until five minutes ago, I had always considered a friend and colleague."

Jacob leaned back against the wall of a tenement building, his head hung forward and his chin resting on his chest. The memories of Sophia's death flashed through his mind again, as they had thousands of times before over the past four months.

"I don't know Marco. I'm not sure I can do it all over again."

"If you need a reason, then do it for Sophia." That made Jacob look up, frowning in confusion.

"What do you mean?"

"Do this for her memory. Sophia was one of the kindest, sweetest girls in the whole agency. She always reminded me of Angelica, back before she started to deteriorate. Having Sophia around…it was almost like having Angelica back."

Jacob noticed with some small level of shock that a thin haze of moisture had built up in Marco's eyes.

"And what you've been doing these past fours months has been an insult to her memory! She deserves more than to have her handler, the man who made her the girl she was, piss away his future and his life at the bottom of a bottle."

It was a long time before Jacob could find his voice, before he could trust himself to speak without the threat of his guilt and shame burying him the instant he opened his mouth.

"You know something Marco?"

"What?"

"I don't know if it's just the alcohol, but I think you're actually making sense."

"Does that mean you'll return to active duty?"

Again Jacob took several minutes to reply, raking his fingers back through black hair that had grown rather shaggy and unkempt in recent weeks. "Yeah, I guess it does."

"Good. I'll drive you home. You can spend tomorrow sobering up and then I'll see if Ferro can arrange to have a car sent to pick you up on Wednesday."

"Don't bother; I can manage on my own. I _will_ take you up on that offer of a ride home, though."

"Hey."

The sudden voice made Jacob blink, pulling him out of his self-recriminating thoughts. Lowering his gaze, he saw Marco gazing at him from over the edge of the magazine.

"What is it?" Jacob asked, pushing himself away from the wall.

"Have you made up your mind yet?"

"I'm still thinking."

"Well think faster," Marco snapped, growing irritated from all the long hours spent over the past two weeks. "We still have three hospitals left to visit today and the first one is almost an hour's drive away. I don't want to have to go all the way out to Bolzano just to have you end up picking a girl we saw here in Rome."

"Fine, fine; don't get your panties in a knot Marco. Let me see the candidate dossier." Stepping across the hall, Jacob reached out to accept the thick manila file Marco had had tucked inside his coat.

Flicking through it, Jacob scanned through the brief synopsis of each girl that had been provided by their doctors, glancing at the attached wallet-sized photo of the girl. For some reason none of the girls in the file, or the ones that he and Marco had otherwise happened upon over the past two weeks had struck him the way Sophia had.

He had known from the first time he laid eyes on her in the hospital that she was the one he wanted; the one he had been meant to teach and protect.

_Maybe that's the point,_ he mused. _Maybe I shouldn't be trying to find this new girl the same way I found Sophia._ God knew that he wouldn't want to try and replace her.

Flipping through to the end of the folder, he turned it over and started again from the beginning. For some reason, each time he started over, he found himself increasingly drawn toward one girl in particular.

The rather unique circumstances surrounding her made her stand out from the others, making him linger there, considering. Maybe…

"You found something?" Marco asked, noticing the change in intensity in Jacob's expression, the narrowing of his focus towards a more refined, singular point.

"I think we need to head back down to Napoli."

A little over two hours later, Jacob found himself standing in the hallway of yet another hospital, almost identical in atmosphere and surroundings to the one in Rome, Marco at his side.

The pair stared through a small observation window set high up on the door to a semi-private room. Inside, a young girl of about fifteen was laid out on one of the two beds. The immaculately white linen sheets were drawn up to her armpits, numerous tubes and hoses running out of her arms and from under the sheets. An intubation hose ran from her mouth to the nearby ventilator. Several larger tubes ran from the major arteries in her arms and chest to a dialysis machine positioned on the opposite side of the bed.

"It's been pretty touch-and-go the last few days," the doctor in charge of her treatment said quietly from behind the two men. "The wound in her side had started to go septic long before the paramedics brought her in. It's a miracle she's even alive. After how hard she's fought to stay alive, it's a shame we can't afford to keep treating her."

"Do you have any idea who she is?" Jacob asked, his gaze still locked on the girl inside the room.

"None. Emergency services reported an anonymous phone-call telling the paramedics where to find her and they picked her up in an alley near the warehouse district. She was comatose when they found her and she has yet to wake up. We don't even know her name."

"Thank you for bringing this case to our attention doctor," Marco said, turning to extend his hand to the man, who shook it gratefully. "This girl's case is precisely the kind we look for at the Social Welfare Agency. Without any friends or family for her to turn to, she stands little chance of surviving. But with our help, she can have the opportunity to live and love again."

"Yes, that's exactly why I called your agency. It isn't fair that she should have to suffer and die just because she isn't Italian, without anyone to pay for her continual care." With that said, the doctor moved off, leaving the two men alone to consider and deliberate.

"So what do you think Jacob? Is she the one?"

Jacob found himself nodding before his reply had even fully taken root in his mind. "Yes, she's the one Marco. Make the call."

The slightly shorter man smiled faintly, pulling a cell phone from his pocket and dialling the agency headquarters. Within seconds, he was passing the details along directly to Dr. Bianchi.

"Wait; one more thing Marco, before you hang up." Marco glanced over, pausing in his conversation.

"Tell Bianchi that I already have a name for him to put in her file.

"Melanie. I want her new name to be Melanie."


	3. Chapter 02: Rebirth of a Warrior

Chapter 02: Rebirth of a Warrior

A cold, moist spring breeze rustled the branches of the trees dotting the sprawling, spacious lawns of Social Welfare Agency's private compound, tiny buds of new life just beginning to sprout with heralding promises of winter's end.

Well-kept grass, left to grow slightly longer for the winter season, was just starting to show signs of renewed growth with a faint greening to be seen in the otherwise sere brown lawn. It wouldn't be long before Galeb Ramsey, the agency's silently diligent and perpetually pleasant groundskeeper would be out tending to the lawns, trees and flowerbeds with tender, loving precision.

Large, fluffy white banks of clouds drifted across the otherwise clear sapphire sky, casting mottled shadows across the landscape as the sun slowly crawled past its zenith, beginning it long descent towards nightfall.

Inside one of the many expansive wings of the agency's main building, Jacob Mehrandish sat alone at a table near the massive row of arched, multi-paned windows. Staring absently out onto the grounds, he idly swirled his spoon around his bowl of beef-and-vegetable soup, made fresh in the agency kitchens the night before.

Reaching out with one hand, not bothering to take his eyes off the window, he brought his glazed ceramic coffee mug to his lips, taking a long, soothing gulp of the steaming hot, bitter fluid within.

"Please, for the love of all that is civilized in this world, tell me that there is something actually in that coffee."

Jacob's eyes flicked over at the gently teasing tone of the man who had spoken.

Michele Pagani, dressed as impeccably as ever in a rich, custom tailored Armani suit, brightly polished dress shoes of genuine black Italian leather peeking out from the cuffs of straight, crisply ironed pant legs, grinned down at Jacob playfully.

At his side, dressed in an equally expensive suit, but worn with a decidedly more casual air, Giuseppe Croce stood with hands stuffed in his pockets. Shaggy dark-brown hair tumbled about his lean, well-sculpted face in sharp contrast to Michele's painstakingly trimmed and groomed lighter brown hair.

"The hell is that supposed to mean?" Jacob snapped, dark eyes narrowing suspiciously.

"I mean, this is Italy! Good God man, you've lived here three years and you're _still_ drinking black coffee?" Michele's face took on an expression of long-suffering horror at the very thought, giving a theatrical shudder for added effect.

"I happen to like black coffee, Pagani. And the only way in Hell I'm ever going to drink one of those strawberry chocolate, mocha lattes, frapachino crap-ass _things_ of yours, is if I suddenly wake up one morning to discover that Bianchi and his crew have kidnapped me during the night and turned me into a _woman_."

"So I guess I shouldn't bother inviting you to martini night then?" Jacob's only answer to that was a dangerous glare.

"Was there something you wanted, Pagani?"

"Yes," Guise cut in, before the two men could go at it again. "We just came by to formally welcome you back to the agency; seeing as how we were both away on missions when Marco brought you back last week."

"Oh, well…thanks."

"Is something wrong?" Michele asked, his joking attitude giving way to a sense of genuine concern for his colleague.

Sighing, Jacob shook his head, leaning back in his seat to stretch cramping back muscles. "No, not really; just nervous, I guess."

"Oh right, I heard that Bianchi and his crew finished up with your new girl last night. She should be waking up sometime this afternoon. Melanie, right?"

Jacob nodded, taking another sip of his coffee.

Before either man had the chance to question Jacob any further on his new cyborg partner, they were interrupted by a sudden, muted call from the doorway. All three men turned to see Victor Hillshire striding calmly yet purposefully towards them.

"There you are, Jacob. I just came from Chief Lorenzo's office; he wants to talk with you before you head over to the hospital wing." Hillshire's rather brusque, business-like tone still carried faint traces of his native German accent, even after almost seven years of living in Italy.

"What does he want?" Jacob asked, gulping down the last of his coffee.

"He didn't say, but I would imagine it has something to do with Melanie."

Pushing himself to his feet with only a mild grunt of effort, Jacob limped over to the counter to deposit his tray and dishes, following close behind Hillshire as the taller man made his way back out into the corridor.

The broad hallway was bathed in light from the large windows carried over from the cafeteria running down its entire length, offering unobstructed views of the grounds beyond. Small flocks of tiny birds flitted amongst the trees and hopped about the lawns, heads bobbing in search of seeds and insects. A few _fratello_ pairs were visible through the windows walking along the myriad flagstone pathways crisscrossing the expansive lawns.

Inside, the two men's footsteps echoed faintly off the marble inlays and tall, vaulted ceiling; the rich dark wood paneling running opposite the gallery windows doing little to absorb the soft reverberations. In the distance, floating through the air from around corners and within unseen rooms, the lilting musical chimes of feminine laughter and innocuous chatter reached the pair.

Rounding a corner, Jacob and Hillshire were forced to stop short as a small cluster of giggling girls pattered down the hall in the opposite direction, intent on the cafeteria and lunch beyond. Jacob cast a disapproving glare at the girls as they slipped by; Kara Pagani, Michele's partner, showing enough decorum to at least blush faintly in embarrassment, offering a quick apology before rushing on after her friends.

"Still not used to being back, I see?" Hillshire asked with mild amusement at his colleague's discomfort. Jacob merely grunted in reply. Continuing on, the pair walked in silence for several long minutes, each content with their own thoughts and the ambient noises of daily life in the agency.

"Hey Victor?" Jacob asked, suddenly feeling slightly uncomfortable, almost wishing he hadn't said anything.

The other, taller man looked over at him, pale grey-blue eyes faintly curious.

Jacob fidgeted awkwardly, one hand scratching at the back of his neck idly. "I uh…never got the chance to ask before I, you know, took off but…how did Triela fare. After that raid, I mean?"

"Oh. Well, she survived, as you likely know already." Hillshire sighed, frowning at the distinctly unpleasant memories of Triela's broken and bloodied body slumped up against the wall of that villa. "But it was close. I was scared Jacob. I feel no shame in admitting it; I was terrified for her. Not since I first found her had she ever been that close to death. She flat-lined twice while Bianchi and his team were working on her.

"It took over thirty-eight hours of surgery and a week in intensive care before she was finally stable enough to be called safe."

"I can't even begin to imagine how much conditioning medication she must have gone through for all that," Jacob mused quietly; missing the slightly irritated, insulted look Hillshire flashed him.

"I don't let myself think about that."

Thankfully, any further antagonism between the two men was mitigated as they came to a halt outside the office of Chief Pieri Lorenzo, head of the Social Welfare Agency's Section Two branch.

With a final, lingering look passing between the two men, Hillshire seeming on the verge of saying something but then deciding against it, he moved off down the corridor, leaving Jacob standing alone next to the heavy oak door.

Jacob frowned, staring at Hillshire's back with a look of aggrieved consternation. He'd recognized the look in the other man's eyes. He'd seen it a thousand times in the eyes of virtually every single one of his fellow handlers and Section Two's support staff. The pity, the sympathy, the hollow commiserations as they each in turn tried to assuage his guilt and his grief, assuring him time and again that it wasn't his fault, that he could not have done anything to save Sophia.

If not for the fact that they were, each and every one of them wrong, Jacob could have accepted their sympathies and moved on with his pain. But they were wrong. It _had_ been his fault. It not for him, she would be alive. He should have spotted the second terrorist, should have reacted faster. Just half-a-second longer, that's all it would have took to recognize what had been happening in those chaotic, panic-filled moments and neutralize the threat.

Growling to himself about the futility of self-pity, Jacob shook off the thickening layer of despair and despondency and stepped boldly into Chief Lorenzo's office.

The room beyond the door was an excellent reflection of the man who occupied it. Simply furnished with tall mahogany bookshelves that lined the back wall, a glass-fronted liquor cabinet nestled in one corner, Pieri Lorenzo's office presented an image of simple, understated elegance.

The man himself sat behind a massive antique mahogany desk, the large window centered behind his back casting a golden nimbus of softly glowing light around him.

"Ah Jacob, excellent; I see Victor was able to track you down, then." Lorenzo rose from his thickly padded dark leather chair, the sudden shift in his position dispelling the corona of light, revealing a man of slowly advancing years. A weathered, deeply-lined face looked out from behind a pair of stylish, thin framed glasses, iron-grey hair kept cut short. He wore a simple sage-green wool turtleneck sweater and dark grey slacks.

Despite the obvious signs of age, the best word to describe Pieri Lorenzo would unquestionably been "sturdy." The man radiated an almost imposing presence, standing with hands pressed firmly to the top of his desk. He was best likened to a towering mountain peak or a centuries old willow tree: weathered and beaten at by time's inexorable passing, yet remaining tall and firm in his resolve. He gave off the impression of a man who had seen the worst life could possibly bring and fought on through it all.

It was an aura of quiet dignity and unspoken resolve that Jacob often saw mirrored in Lorenzo's old friend and colleague Elio Alboreto, one of Jacob's fellow handlers.

"Yes sir, he was. Victor mentioned you wanting to talk to me. I assume it has something to do with Melanie?"

Lorenzo waved Jacob toward one of the two chairs angled inwards in front of his desk, which Jacob took with a slight nod of acknowledged thanks. He waited until Jacob was seated before continuing. "Yes, that's right. I had hoped to go over a few points with you in regards to her training regimen."

"Excuse me sir," Jacob interrupted, frowning in mild confusion. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but unless things have changed around here in the four months I've been gone, I thought it was still the prerogative of each individual handler to set the training of his cyborg?"

"It is," Lorenzo assured him, waving one hand in a soothing, placating gesture. "You misunderstand me, Jacob. I didn't invite you here to tell you how to train your new girl."  
"Then why _did_ you want to talk to me?"

"To discuss _what_ you're going to be tasked with teaching her. With the moderate successes the agency has had with Marisa, Allison and Agapita in regards to custom-tailored conditioning therapies, Minister Petris has given the go-ahead for the creation of a new cyborg operative specially trained as a wilderness tracking and hunting expert.

"Melanie's ultimate goal will be to serve as the agency's dedicated "man-hunter", as it were. She will also be required to provide dedicated extreme-range sniper support."

Jacob's face twisted into an expression of incredulous bewilderment, unable to reconcile this information with everything he knew about the agency and it operations. "Wilderness tracking expert? Why? Virtually all of our operations are conducted in urban environments."

"That has always been the case in the past, yes. Unfortunately, we are beginning to see the negative side-effect to our tremendous efficacy and success rate in the field: many of Padania's senior organizers and faction leaders are realizing just how vulnerable they. We're already pulling in new information about high-ranking members fleeing into the country-side where it is proving harder to track them."

"So we're going to need people specially trained to be able to flush them out of their hidden bolt-holes, huh?" Jacob mused thoughtfully.

"Exactly."

"Okay, I can see the sense in that, but why me? I'm no expert on tracking; all of my military experience as been in urban operations. I was a door-kicker and explosives man back with the JTF, I'm not a sniper."

"Minor detail, Jacob. That's why we have an open training contract with the GIS. They have all the experience we need in training our girls for whatever role they're needed in. Triela is a martial-arts expert, after all and you don't see Victor throwing-down with her in the sparing ring, do you?"

"I suppose you have a point there, sir," Jacob admitted with a faint grumble of dissatisfaction.

"Of course I do. Any training you need can be taken alongside Melanie's own.

"Now I understand from Dr. Bianchi that he and his team completed work on Melanie this morning and that she should be just about ready for activation."

"Yes sir, I got the call myself from Bianchi just a couple of hours ago. I was planning to head over to the hospital wing right after eating when Victor found me."

"Very good. Well I won't keep you any longer then. Allow me just one last moment to welcome you back, Jacob."

"Thank you, sir." Thusly dismissed, Jacob rose and, with a differential nod of respect, turned on his heel and strode from the room.

Outside, Jacob took several long strides down the hallway before stopping to lean up against the wall. His hand trembled slightly as he reached into the pocket of his khakis shorts. He withdrew a small, silver-plated hipflask, unscrewing the top and taking a quick swig. The pale amber fluid within burned a path down his oesophagus and he sighed as a soothing warmth spread through his middle, calming the tremors slightly.

Replacing the cap and slipping the flask back into his pocket, Jacob raised his hand to his head, pinching his temples between thumb and forefinger, kneading the flesh sharply. _Christ, what have I gotten myself into?_

Melanie twitched and jerked in her bed, struggling faintly as shadowy images, disembodied voices and imperceptible sounds floated out of the darkness surrounding her to snatch at her arms and legs, tugging at her mind with sharp, barbed claws.

Blurred faces rose out of the depths, wavering in her vision before dissolving back into the nothingness that threatened to smother her. She strained to make out the words whispering to her, fighting through overlapping layers of cloying fog to grasp hold of their meaning. But no matter how hard she tried, they remained elusive, darting just outside her reach, fingertips brushing along their surfaces before skittering away.

The echoing boom of a portal slamming shut roared through the empty caverns of her thoughts, shredding the encroaching shadows and sending golden shafts of light spearing through the darkness. Reaching out blindly, she clutched at the comforting warmth that light brought, desperately seeking the peace and safety that it offered.

All around her the sinister whispers clung and clawed at her, trying to drag her back down into oblivion. She fought them off, thrashing and screaming.

She snapped awake with staggering force, her body jerking upright in bed. A cold sweat born of fear and anxiety soaked her body, plastering her shoulder-length red-gold hair to her skull in wild disarray. She sucked in deep soothing breaths, her heart thundering within her chest. The sound of her own pulse pounded in her ears, deafening her to the world around her.

Blinking away terrified tears that ran in rivulets down her softly rounded face, Melanie tried to bring her breathing and heart-rate under control as she waited for her vision to come back into focus.

The first thing she saw was a man standing just inside the door to her room, arms folded loosely across a wide, well-muscled chest. He was compact, of only average height but sturdily muscled from head to toe. His darkly browned skin stood out starkly against the pale cream paint on the walls. His jet-black hair was left slightly long, brushed back in a vaguely tousled, windswept style. Several days' growth of stubble shadowed his neck and jaw-line and his dark brown eyes bore faint darkened circles beneath them.

He was dressed casually in a black polo shirt topped with a wide band of burgundy across the shoulders and down the outsides of the arms, the top button of the narrow black collar left undone. The shirt was tucked into dark coloured desert-tan khaki shorts that fell to just above the man's knees.

Familiarity and a sense of comforting safety bloomed within Melanie the instant her eyes fell upon the man. Her face lit up in recognition, soft amber-coloured eyes widening.

Noting her beaming, almost ecstatic expression, the man sighed softly, reaching up with one hand to scratch at the back of his neck. "I assume you know who I am, then?"

"Of course!" Melanie replied eagerly, happiness growing inside of her, filling her with warmth. "You're Jacob, my handler."

"Okay," Jacob said, leaning back up against the wall, stuffing his hands deep into the pockets of his shorts. "Do you know your name?"

"Uh…my name is…" She had to struggle momentarily, the question sending a cascade of jumbled thoughts tumbling through her mind. "Melanie. My name…is Melanie."

"Very good. What are you?"

Melanie's chest swelled at his praising words, a faint blush tinting the creamy-white skin of her cheeks. "I am a Series Two combat cyborg, attached to Section Two of the Social Welfare Agency." Again he nodded approval of her answer.

"And what is your purpose of being?"

"To seek out and kill, without hesitation, all those individuals deemed a threat to the peace and safety of Italy, as directed to me by yourself, or other ranking members of agency staff."

He stood there silently for a time, dark eyes staring into her. She met his gaze firmly, determined to prove herself worthy to Jacob. His was the most important opinion in the world to her, after all.

"Okay, good enough. I'll be just outside; come on out when you're ready and I'll show you around to familiarize you with the compound." He turned to leave, sending a lump into Melanie's throat, frantic that he was leaving her behind.

Crying out, she threw back the thin sheets covering her, scrambling to her feet to stand before him. She almost sent herself tumbling to the floor in her haste, her toes snagging the rumpled sheet beneath her. "Wait! I…I'm ready now. You don't have to wait for me."

Jacob's face darkened as a faint blush of his own crept into his neck and cheeks, and he turned away uncomfortably, averting his gaze. "Uh…that's nice to know Melanie but…you might want to get dressed first. The dress-code might be pretty relaxed around here, but they _do_ tend to frown on you girls running around naked."

Melanie's jaw dropped open, her eyes bulging wide in shock. Her face beginning to burn a bright red, she hesitatingly dropped her gaze to stare down the length of her trim, lithely-muscled body. True to Jacob's observation, she stood before him in all her naked glory, skin pebbling in the chill spring air.

Jacob winced at the sudden, ear-piercing shriek that erupted from her throat, one slightly bushy eyebrow arching as she dove almost straight backwards, launching herself back onto her bed, sheets flying in a mad whirl as she scrambled to wrap something around herself.

"Jacob?" she wailed, bulging golden-yellow eyes brimming with tears of humiliation staring out at him from deep within the linen cowl wrapped tightly about her head. "W-W-Why am I n-n-naked?"

Jacob was sorely tempted to crack a smile and had to fight back the chuckle straining to burst free. Given the poor girl's already monumental mortification, he felt that having her handler laughing at her discomfort was about the last thing her self-esteem needed.

Taking a strangle-hold of his mirth, he contented himself with a slow, deep sigh and wearied shake of his head. "Probably because the doctors in this place are all a bunch of twisted old perverts, that's why." He waved one hand to indicate the large set of reproduction antique dresser drawers in the corner of the room to his left. "There are plenty of clothes in there that should fit you; just pick out what you like best and then join me outside." Letting his arm drop when she gave a curt nod in acknowledgment, Jacob turned on his heel and slipped out the door, pulling it shut behind him with a dull click.

Melanie waited for several minutes while her racing heart climbed back down from her throat. Her face still burned in embarrassment, her whole body trembling slightly from the emotional shock. She couldn't believe she had simply jumped out like that, completely exposing herself to Jacob. _Well this is a fine start to our partnership,_ she thought to herself.

When she finally felt composed enough to try venturing out of her linen cocoon, she slowly began peeling off the overlapping layers, leaving just one thing sheet wrapped and folded about her thin frame. Swinging her legs over the side of the mattress, she shivered lightly as the bare soles of her feet made contact with the cold tiled floor.

She hadn't noticed earlier in her head-long rush to humiliate herself, but the room was _cold_. Glancing about, Melanie saw that the small window next to her bed was open a crack, the filmy curtains rippling in the faint breeze.

Stepping up to the window, Melanie shivered as a slightly stronger gust brought a small breath of wind into the room that curled about her bare legs, tickling the skin of her calves and sending shivers up her spine.

Reaching out, careful to hold the sheet firmly shut with her other hand, Melanie gripped the top of the window and pushed it firmly down, flipping the latch to lock it in place. Instantly she felt the room grow noticeably warmer.

Padding over to the dresser, her feet slapping quietly against the floor tiles, Melanie pulled open the drawers, finding an almost dizzying array of clothes in dozens of different cuts and styles.

Picking out a set of simple white cotton undergarments, she fumbled about awkwardly, attempting to pull on first panties and then bra without relinquishing her death-grip on her protective sheet. Her frustration grew as her hands and fingers failed to properly obey her commands, her movements oddly sluggish and slow.

Finally resigned to the fact that she would not be able to do all three things at once, Melanie cast about a quick glance around the room, her face heating again in embarrassment. She knew the room was empty, but for some indiscernible reason, she couldn't shake the idea of being watched.

Sucking in a deep, steadying breath, she let the sheet slide off her shoulders, crumpling in a heap around her ankles, leaving her once again standing naked and exposed. Working with an almost frantic swiftness, Melanie struggled to pull on her underwear, hopping about on one foot while trying without success to aim her other foot through the leg-hole of the panties.

With a slight, panicked yelp of alarm, she felt her foot slip out from under her, pitching her backwards to land with jarring force on her backside. She winced in pain as her tail-bone slammed against the hard tile. She sat there, stunned for several minutes, legs splayed out in front of her, cotton panties dangling uselessly in her hands.

_Oh my God, if I end up having to have Jacob help me put my clothes on for me, I think I might just shoot myself right here, and now,_ she growled under her breath, teeth gritted in fierce concentration.

Glancing down at herself, Melanie sighed, thin lips twisting into a wry, sardonic grin. "Well, while I'm down here anyway…"

Leaning forward, she bent her legs up and slipped first one and then the other foot through. Climbing back up to her feet, she drew the garment up her legs until it was snug around her waist.

Her face heated, embarrassed not only with how much trouble she had had with the mindlessly simple task, but also at the completely inappropriate surge of pride she felt at having finally succeeded.

Picking up the bra from where she'd set it on top of the dresser, she held the piece of clothing out before her, staring blankly at the complicated array of hooks and clasps that were intended to hold it closed.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," she snapped, tossing the garment away in a huff. "I'm not even going to bother wasting my time." Digging her hands around inside the underwear drawer, she managed to find a plain white sport's bra, managing to slip that over her chest and adjust it into place with relative ease.

Reaching down, she picked up her discarded sheet and wrapped it around herself again. She then began sifting through the literally hundreds of pieces of clothing available to her to choose from.

Eventually, after searching through more than half of what the dresser had to offer, she picked out a dark red, long sleeved t-shirt that she slipped on over her head, after tossing her sheet back onto the bed. A simple pair of plain, unadorned blue jeans quickly followed, cinched around her waist by a utilitarian faux leather belt.

A plain black t-shirt slipped over her red undershirt for layering completed her look and she padded back over to her bed, sitting down to pull on the pair of purple knee-high socks she had picked out, having learned her lesson the first time. Last came the pair of black flats set beside the dresser for her. She wasn't about to try fighting with the laces on either of the two pairs of running shoes.

Then, taking a deep steadying breath, Melanie reached out, grasped polished brass handle, and stepped outside for the first time.

"It's about time," Jacob muttered when the slim, strawberry-blond finally stepped out of her room onto the open-air colonnade. Melanie blushed furiously in response, her eyes skittering away, refusing to meet his gaze.

"S-S-Sorry Jacob; I…I couldn't decide what to wear. There were so many choices that I…" She gulped nervously, reaching up to twirl one dangling lock of hair around a finger.

_Great,_ Jacob thought to himself, rolling his eyes. _It would be just my luck if Melanie turned out to have been a flakey bimbo in her previous life._

"Don't worry about it," he grumbled aloud, trying his best to placate the young cyborg. "It's not like there's anything major planned for either of us today. Your training won't really begin until tomorrow."

Melanie dipped her head in mute acceptance, squirming slightly as her stomach fluttered nauseously at having lied to Jacob about the reason for her taking so long. She briefly contemplated confessing the truth, if only to rid herself of the uncomfortable sensation curdling her insides.

Determined not to humiliate herself any further, she forced the sick feeling into the back of her mind, stamping it down until it was nothing more than a muted buzzing.

"You hungry?" Jacob asked, startling her out of her private musings.

"Oh…uh, not really; but I could go for something to drink, though."

"Alright, I guess I might as well start off with showing you to the cafeteria then. Come on." He set off as soon as he finished, his long strides measured and balanced, weight pitched low to give him the impression of being rooted to the ground. Melanie scurried to catch up to her handler, naturally falling into step several paces behind and to the right of him after only a few strides.

Melanie felt herself calming down as the cool wind played across her face and lightly ruffled her hair. The stiffening breeze had pulling in more clouds which covered the sky above in broad swaths, casting the ground below in shadow.

The pair passed by several members of the agency's staff, who nodded in greeting to Jacob, pausing to smile down at her welcomingly. There were only a few of their fellow _fratellos_ walking about, most striding purposefully about in the distance as they either returned or headed out for training. The only pair that Melanie and Jacob encountered along the long, pillared colonnade was a tall, broad-shouldered man in a white shirt and black dress-pants. The top three buttons of the shirt were left undone, exposing a thick mat of black hair covering his heavily muscled chest.

Rich black hair was held back in a short pony-tail that hung to just below his shoulders. Deep brown eyes peered curiously out of a wide, sun-tanned face that was kept cleanly shaved, with the exception of a small, neatly-trimmed chin-beard.

"Well, well; it seems the prodigal son has indeed returned to the fold," the man said with a chuckle, his voice a deep silky rumble, eyes glittering with good humour. "I'd heard you were back, Jacob. So this is Melanie, is it?"

Melanie blushed faintly under the man's careful scrutiny, his evaluating gaze trailing up and down the length of her body. "Um…h-hello," she stammered out weakly."

"Bit of a timid little thing, isn't she?" the man noted, laughing, he held one large, long-fingered hand out to her, which she took hesitatingly, feeling him squeeze down forcefully in a powerful handshake. "Costante Barone. You're a lucky girl Melanie; Jacob's one of the best here. You listen to what he has to teach you and before long you'll be one the best as well."

"Uh…thanks. I'll…do my best."

"And this lovely young lady is my cyborg, Nina." Costante waved his hand behind him once he'd released his death-grip on her own hand, indicating the lightly tanned girl standing patiently several paces further down the way.

Wavy black hair spilling down her back almost to her waist, Nina was dressed in a simple white t-shirt trimmed in blue around the cuffs and collar tucked into a knee-length, mustard-yellow, tartan-patterned pleated skirt. A thin trim of white lace ran around the skirt's hem, matching the lace trim at the top of thigh-high dark blue stockings that showed above the tops of knee-high black leather boots that laced up the front. A pair of dark gold ribbons tied in perfect bows and set just above and behind her ears completed Nina's outfit.

Nina's bright green eyes were narrowed suspiciously, and a fierce scowl twisted the features of her perfectly sculpted heart-shaped face. Her thinly muscled arms were crossed beneath a rather impressive bosom that was accentuated by the tight fit of her shirt, and made to seem even larger by her tall, slim build.

"Go on Nina, say hello to the new girl," Costante urged. Placing his hand on the small of her back, he gave her a gentle push forward, eliciting a tiny yelp of protest and faint widening of her eyes. She stumbled slightly, throwing her arms out for balance. She straightened sharply, throwing her handler a long-suffering look of indignation.

Standing several inches taller than Melanie, the older girl glared down at her younger counter-part, full lips set in a pouting frown. For several minutes they simply stared at one another, the nervous fluttering in Melanie's stomach intensifying by the moment.

Finally, Nina snapped out a short sharp "Hi," before turning on her heel to cast her glare up at her handler. "Can we go now? We're going to be late getting to the assault-course as it is and I am _not_ going to stand around waiting for that bimbo Petra to finish first." Her chiming, musical voice was slightly spoiled by her harsh, demanding tone.

Costante sighed theatrically, throwing Jacob an apologetic look. "Okay, okay. Sorry Jacob, duty calls. Guess we'll have to catch up later." Jacob merely nodded in response, he and Melanie watching silently as the pair strode off and out of sight around a corner.

"Jacob?" Melanie asked softly, once the pair was gone.

"Hmm?"

"What was wrong with Nina? She seemed kind of upset. And for some reason, I don't think she likes me."

"She doesn't like anyone, Melanie. I wouldn't worry about it; that's just the way she is. Just be careful about what you say when around her. Now let's go."

Moving on, they continued along the spacious agency lawns, eventually arriving at the doors leading into the cafeteria from outside.

Still rather early in the afternoon, there were very few people to be found within. With lunch finished and hours to go before dinner would be served, the normally crowded, noisy hall was serenely quiet; the sounds of the kitchen staff milling about working the only noise to be heard.

Jacob pointed out the small, buffet-style snack bar that was kept stocked at all times with numerous types of sliced fruit and several flavours of pies for people to come in and grab whenever they got hungry between meals. Behind the snack bar, set in the far corner of the room beside a staggering array of over a dozen different types of breads were numerous drink dispensers serving a wide array of chilled juices.

Removing a small drinking glass from the cupboard under the dispensers, Jacob filled it with a fruit cocktail and handed it to Melanie, who accepted it gratefully. She wrapped her hands around the slim glass carefully, raising it to her lips to take a small, experimental sip. Finding the sweet blend of tastes to her liking she quickly gulped the rest down, sighing happily as she lowered the glass back down.

"Wow, that was so good," she exclaimed after setting the glass into the shallow plastic dish-bin by the cafeteria's main serving counter.

Jacob shook his head incredulously, marvelling at her innocent exuberance. "It was only fruit punch Melanie."

"I know," she replied defensively. "But I've never had it before and it tasted really good."

"Well, whatever; if you're ready, we still have a lot of places to visit. Some of them are quite a ways out from the main buildings, so it will take us a while to get there."

"Sure, let's go."

They proceeded out of the cafeteria, picking the interior set of doors that led into the main building itself. He took her around the first corner and down the hallway, passing through a set of double-doors that let into the ground floor of the cyborg dormitory.

"The bathroom is all the way at the end of this corridor," Jacob explained, standing just inside the dormitory doors. "I'll have some shower supplies delivered to your room later tonight for you to use in the morning.

"The rooms on this floor are devoted to the First Generation girls, while upstairs is where the Second Generation girls live. Once you've settled in and the technicians have had a chance to look you over in a few days to make sure everything is working properly, you'll be moved to your own dorm room up on the second floor."

"I understand."

"Good, now come on. I'll show you the quickest way to get to the bathrooms from your room right now."

Leading her back out of the dormitory, they took a right at the junction of two corridors, heading further away from the cafeteria. Eventually they came to another set of steel doors, these ones exiting out onto the same colonnade that they had been walking down earlier.

"Just walk along the colonnade the same way we were doing to reach the cafeteria from your room, but take this door instead. The first hallway on your left leads straight to the dorms and you can find your way from there."

"Got it."

Next he took her over to the engineering section of the compound. The large, imposing brick building towering four stories high was over two hundred years old, though little more than the ivy-covered exterior remained of the original construction. Inside, everything had been replaced with clean, sterile walls and floors of pale coloured tiles that had been waxed and scrubbed to a near-mirror finish.

He showed her how to find her way to Dr. Bianchi's office, where she would have report to regularly for her psychological profile examinations. He also pointed out a few of the smaller, basic testing labs that would allow the technicians to inspect and study the performance of her various cybernetic components.

Leaving the engineering ward, the pair made the long trek out to the indoor shooting range. Taking her inside the squat concrete building, Jacob spoke a few words to the security agent seated in the tiny booth visible beyond the small pane of several inches thick ballistic glass. Opening the ledger that the man slipped through the tiny slot at the bottom of the window, Jacob signed himself and Melanie in and then, handing the ledger back to the guard, escorted her through the massive steel door.

Melanie could hear the muffled report of gunfire echoing up the narrow corridor from below. Her nose wrinkled faintly as they descended through the subterranean bunker, the air thick with the acrid stench of burnt and discharged gunpowder.

They came to another door composed of solid steel plating that Jacob swung open with a small grunt of effort after unlocking it with a key that he withdrew from his pocket. Stepping inside behind Jacob, Melanie's jaw instantly dropped. She stood frozen in place, slowly gazing around the sprawling room beyond the threshold.

Dozens of shelving units lined virtually every inch of available wall space. Additional shelves anchored between pairs of thick concrete pillars formed aisles across the centre of the room. The shelved were all packed to the point of overflowing with a dizzying array of firearms, ranging from literally hundreds of different makes and models of handguns all the way up to assault rifles, heavy machine guns and several massive anti-material rifles.

"Holy cow," Melanie whispered in staggered awe. An entire battalion's worth of weapons were on display in this one room, and it still only represented a quarter of the agency's full armoury compliment.

The only break in the shelving was a narrow steel door that led into a second room that was only about a third the size, but similarly crammed with dozens of shelves. The concrete walls, floor and ceiling of the conjoining room was nearly three feet thick of solid reinforced concrete set with forged lead plates embedded halfway through on every side. The reason for the almost ludicrous amount of reinforcing was immediately clear as Melanie followed Jacob over to the door: inside, hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition in every size and calibre imaginable were stored, stacked in tightly plastic-sealed boxes from the floor to the ceiling.

Jacob grabbed several boxes of handgun bullets, waving her back as he closed and relocked the door.

"I thought we weren't going to have any training today?" Melanie asked, confused as to why he would be collecting equipment to take down to the ranges below.

"We aren't. But you need to pick out a weapon for yourself so you'll have for tomorrow when we _do_ start your training."

"Oh, well…I thought I would just use the same type of gun you use, Jacob. That's good enough for me."

"Well it isn't good enough for me," Jacob retorted sharply. "I've spent years tailoring my personal weapon preferences. I don't agree with the way some of the other handlers just dump carbon-copies of their own weapon set-ups onto their girls. It's lazy and inefficient.

"Just because the guns I use work for me, doesn't mean it's going to work for you. Your hands are smaller; you're shorter and lighter than I am; your entire physical structure is completely different.

"Aside from a few recommendations I have, I would rather have you using a weapon that you picked out yourself based on comfort, ease of use and reliability as opposed to pandering to some bullshit sense of vanity by having us use matching weapons.

"We're assassins, not God-damned fashion models."

Melanie was taken aback by the bitter fierceness in Jacob's voice and she quailed slightly under his withering glare. "Oh…uh, ok. I'm sorry; I didn't mean to upset you Jacob. I understand."

Realizing that he'd been ranting angrily at her, Jacob modulated his tone, shifting awkwardly at the nervous, almost scared look in her wide-eyed amber gaze. "Forget it Melanie, it's not a big deal. I just got a little carried away, is all."

She nodded, sighing inwardly in relief that he wasn't angry with her. "So…um…what _do_ you recommend I use, then? I mean, there's kind of a lot to choose from and I don't really know where to even start." She turned about slowly, surveying the rather intimidating variety of firearms available to her.

"Right, good point. Well, I use a combat variant SIG Sauer P226, chambered for forty calibre Smith and Wesson rounds. The only points I'll insist on is that your sidearm be a combat or tactical variant of whatever model it's based on and that it be chambered for either the forty-cal or nine-mill Parabellum rounds."

"How come?" Melanie asked, genuinely curious as to his reasoning."

"Versatility and team-work coordination," he replied smoothly. "Tactical-variant handguns allow the use of additional accessories like suppressors, laser-sights and even night-scopes. It gives you a significantly wider range of options available to you during battle.

"The more tools you have at your disposal to help you adapt to changing scenarios while in battle, the more likely you are to survive and succeed in your mission.

"And as for the calibre choice, it's much easier lugging your gear around if you don't have to carry four or five different types of ammunition. If we're both using the same bullets, we cam split the load between us and then share as necessary."

"Right, I understand."

The next hour was spent slowly making their way through the dozens upon dozens of different handguns. Occasionally Jacob would point out one model that met his criteria and that he thought would suit her, and she picked it out of the neatly organized array. Eventually she ended up with over a dozen different weapons that she piled carefully inside a small duffel bag that Jacob retrieved from a large rack of similar bags.

Carrying her chosen arsenal, the two of them made their way out of the armoury and down to the shooting range itself. Again they had to pause to sign in with a second security guard, who buzzed them through with a friendly bob of his head.

Inside, the only other occupants were a pair of support staff members. One was a tall, broad-shouldered man in his mid-thirties, with short blonde hair that was swept back from his forehead and a thin chin beard.

Picking an empty lane, Jacob slipped a pair thickly padded hearing protectors over his ears after setting the boxes of bullets down on the counter. He was about to show her how to load the bullets into the empty cartridges when, without any prompting, she swiftly set about doing it herself, fingers flying smoothly and precisely.

_Oh, right; pre-programmed knowledge. Can't believe I forgot about that one._

Melanie set her stance just behind the concrete barrier, feet spread shoulder-width apart, back held straight. She was about to raise her first chosen weapon towards the target stationed fifty feet away when Jacob placed one hand on her arm, forcing it down roughly.

"You forget something?" he barked, holding out a pair of safety glasses. She frowned up at him, not understanding the necessity of the safety gear. "But I'm a cyborg. I don't need those."

"Your eyes are just as vulnerable to shrapnel as any other normal person, Melanie," he snapped, his face darkening in anger. "Now put them on!"

"Y…yes sir," she stammered, placing her pistol back down on the counter to accept the glasses and slip them on. Only then did Jacob wave her forward to continue, slipping on his own safety glasses.

He shouted out suddenly as she once again raised her gun to level it on the distant target. "Lane five, ready to fire!" She pulled back the slide smoothly, chambering the first round. Steadying her hand, she took careful aim.

"Lane five, commence firing!"

Another hour-and-a-half went by as Melanie went through each of the guns she had chosen. One by one she whittled down her choices, until only three remained. A dull ache had begun to throb through her arms with the prolonged effort of maintaining a steady, level grip as she fired off round after round, clip after clip in a seemingly endless cycle. Most of the handguns were barely distinguishable from one another; each supporting only the faintest of variant differences. At those times, Melanie found herself needing to burn through two or three entire clips each before she could definitively rule out one or the other.

But at long last she was nearly done with the exhausting task. With only three more handguns remaining, she had by now become intimately familiar with each one. She already had a strong idea of which one she would choose.

After several more minutes of careful consideration, of pouring ever every minute detail in the remaining three weapons, of testing the weight, balance and overall natural feel of the gun in her hand, she finally straightened and pushed the last two away, leaving only her final choice before her.

"The Heckler and Koch USP45 huh?" Jacob said, stepping up behind her to look over her shoulder. "Not bad."

"It's the compact tactical variant, just like you suggested. It can chamber the same forty calibre rounds you use, but its small enough that it fits perfectly into my hand, and can be concealed pretty easy too."

"Like I said, not bad. So you're sure that's what you want to go with?"

"Yes," she replied without hesitation.

"Okay then; I'll fill out the paperwork later and we can pick up a set of shoulder and hip holsters on our way out. You can drop that one off with the rest of these; I'll grab you a brand new one at the same time."

"Oh you don't have to do that," Melanie said in mild protest. "I'm already used to this one."

"And you're probably the hundredth person to put several dozen rounds through it in testing. I'm surprised it didn't jam up on you at least half-a-dozen times. If you're going to be responsible for the upkeep of your gear, it's going to be _yours_ and no-one else's. That way you can be absolutely certain of anything and everything that's happened to it since the time it came out of its box."

Melanie was slightly torn in her feelings. On the one hand, she was slightly disappointed that she wouldn't get to keep the gun she'd been using and had grown somewhat attached to. On the other hand however, she felt a powerful thrill of joy surge through her at the prospect of Jacob giving her a brand new weapon, straight from the box. It would be wholly and completely hers, with her handler as the only other person to have ever touched it.

"And from the look of your target sheets, you're going to need the extra lifespan on your gun just to get yourself up to and acceptable proficiency level."

That brought her mood sinking back down and she glanced up, ashamed at the virtually untouched sheet of paper hanging at the far end of the firing lane. Less than twenty tears and perforations marred the black silhouetted target form to give evidence of all the dozens upon dozens of rounds she'd fired. The majority of those few shots that had struck had done so along the extreme edges of the paper, with only three lucky shots managing to land within the target zone itself.

"I'm sorry Jacob. I _was_ trying. Really."

Jacob sighed inwardly, resisting the urge to growl in irritation. He really needed to break her of her timid, perpetually apologetic attitude. Not even Henrietta was this bad. "Don't worry about it. You just woke up a few hours ago; you're bound to need a few days before you're used to the way your body moves and works, it's natural. You'll have plenty of time to practice, trust me." She nodded shortly, her face loosing some of its sullen look.

Melanie packed up the remaining weapons still lying about the counter, slinging it over her shoulder while plucking the Plexiglas safety glasses from her face. She began walking over to the entrance to the range when a fierce bark from behind snapped her up short, freezing her in place.

"Hey! Where the Hell do you think you're going?" Jacob demanded angrily, his voice booming and echoing loudly enough to draw the attention of the two other agency men, who looked over curiously. Seeing the source of the commotion, they both quickly turned back to their own affairs, neither eager to get themselves caught in the cross-fire of an argument between a handler and his cyborg.

Mouth working soundlessly, Melanie stared back at Jacob, eyes darting in confusion. Why was he suddenly so angry at her? He had just finished telling her he wasn't upset about her poor shooting, so what had happened?

"I…I thought you said…I was…the armoury…" she couldn't make her voice work properly, her throat closing convulsively as waves of nervous fear washed through her.

"Get your ass back here, now!" he snapped, thrusting one thick finger out towards her firing lane. Quickly she darted back to his side, stopping just outside the small booth.

Folding his arms across his chest, Jacob glared down at her, his voice a deep, menacing growl. "What's wrong with this picture, Melanie?"

Casting her gaze about the booth, Melanie struggled to find the source of his anger. She had collected all the handguns that she'd brought down, and all the remaining unused bullets had been carefully packed back into their respective boxes. She couldn't understand it. Nothing seemed to fit to justify Jacob's apparent fury towards her.

"I…I don't…" she stammered, turning back to look up at him, eyes glistening with tears.

With an irritated hiss, Jacob strode over to a metal locker that was bolted to the wall, removing several items from within before striding back over to Melanie. With perhaps slightly more force than was necessary, he thrust the broom roughly into her hands, stabbing a finger down at the ground. "There are spent casings all over the floor and GSR coating everything in here. When you finish shooting I expect you to leave your lane in the _exact_ same condition as you found it: clean and tidy, ready for the next person to come along, you got that?"

Melanie nodded dumbly in mute reply; eyes wide, her whole body trembling like a leaf. Without a word she turned and set about sweeping up the casings, dumping them into the provided garbage can. Afterwards, taking the rag and cleaning solution Jacob handed her, she set about wiping down all the surfaces until the cloth came away clean.

Watching from behind her, Jacob fumed silently. His head throbbed painfully, setting off a dull ache behind his eyes. He mentally chastised himself for freaking out on Melanie the way he had. The poor girl had been online for less than half a day; she was going to make mistakes and lots of them until she got settled. Sophia had taken several days before she had finally been able to remember to clean up her lane without his gently prompting reminder.

Hand trembling faintly, Jacob pulled his flask from his coat pocket, flicking a quick glance down the length of the range to ensure that the other two men were busy with their own affairs before popping the cap to take a long, burning gulp that instantly send a soothing warmth radiating through him.

Replacing the flask, he felt his nerves calming, the pain in his head slowly receding. By that time, Melanie was about finished cleaning up and he waved her over to the locker where she carefully replaced everything. Only then did he escort her from the line.

Placing everything neatly back in the armoury, the pair made their way back up to the surface, Jacob only pausing long enough to sign them out and take a slim package of paperwork forms.

From the indoor range, they strode around to the physical training fields, which encompassed a large multi-stage obstacle course that, as Jacob explained, was used to test the cyborgs' balance and coordination, as well as to help sharpen their basic fundamental instincts of how to move while in combat.

The course was surrounded by a wide running track composed of crushed black pumice stone. The track was almost twice the regulation size of four-hundred metres on the inner-most lane in order to accommodate the obstacle course. In addition to providing ample room for the girls to test their stamina and speed, the running track also provided a convenient barrier separating the course from the sparing grounds.

Divided between half-a-dozen twenty-metre wide circles of hard-packed dirt, each sparing zone was separated by rows of plain wooden benches flanking it on all sides. One of the circles was in use as Melanie and Jacob made their way through and she found herself lingering to watch in rapt fascination.

A tall young man with slightly shaggy jet-black hair slowly circled a young girl who was almost a full head shorter than him. Her flowing blonde hair was held back in twin pony-tails, her darkly tanned face set with an expression of grim determination. The pair seemed to dance and flow around one another as they each lashed out with a dizzyingly complex series of punches and kicks.

Watching the pair bob and weave, darting in with lightning-fast strikes and spinning away in brilliantly conceived evasive manoeuvres, Melanie felt something stirring within her, her blood surging through her veins in response to the absolute physical mastery presented by the two adversaries.

Standing nearby, a tall thinly-built man watched the ongoing match with undivided attention. His narrow face bore an expression of poorly-concealed concern. His hands fidgeted nervously within the deep pockets of the dark grey overcoat he wore to protect his matching dark grey suit.

A sharp tap on her shoulder pulled Melanie's attention around to find Jacob looking down on her with a wry grin twisting his lips.

"There will be plenty of time for you to ogle Alpha during your own martial-arts training, and we still have to visit the outdoor range and pick you out a marksman's rifle," Jacob rebuked her softly, though his voice carried a slight chuckle that told Melanie that he was more amused than annoyed.

A hot flush of embarrassment suffused her face at the idea of Jacob thinking her some moon-eyed little girl, swooning over some boy. Sure the young man was distinctively good-looking, but that had nothing to do with why she's been staring. She stammered out a response, feeling the sudden need to defend herself. "I…I wasn't…doing that. I was just…the way they're moving: it's amazing; so smooth and fast. Their balance and precision is perfect."

Jacob gazed down at her, Melanie's eyes turned once more to watch as Triela and Alpha continued to hammer at each other mercilessly. He was forced to re-evaluate his initial opinion on the young girl Melanie had been prior to her conversion.

With her conditioning tailored to turn her into a tracker and sniper, there was no reason for her to be so strongly instinctually drawn to the martial arts. Which meant it had to be some lingering remnant of her old personality bleeding through the mind-wipe.

"Oh, well I'm glad you're interested. Most of the other girls can't be bothered to even attempt learning more than basic hand-to-hand techniques. Too many of them rely on their superior strength and speed to overwhelm their enemies, despite the lessons learned with Pinocchio."

"Who's Pinocchio?" Melanie asked curiously, turning back to him.

"He was an assassin who worked for Padania. A couple of years ago Triela had a run in with him when the agency raided the safe-house of a major terrorist leader. Pinocchio managed to defeat her in a direct hand-to-hand duel."

"But isn't she a cyborg like me?"

"Triela is a first generation cyborg, which means she's even stronger and faster than you are and yes, he still defeated her. He was better than she was and she let arrogance blind her to that fact. Speed and strength are worthless if you don't have the precision control to properly use it. Remember that."

"I will Jacob," she replied seriously, assuring him of her conviction to learn everything he had to teach her. "Will I get to learn stuff like what they're doing?"

"If you want and so long as it doesn't interfere with your other training. But I wouldn't get your hopes up of quickly being a match for either of those two. Alpha and Triela are the best martial artists in the agency. They've spent years cultivating and honing their respective skills."

Melanie nodded her understanding, throwing one last look over her shoulder as she and Jacob moved on towards the rifle range. She made a promise to herself as the two sparing partners slipped out of sight. She _would_ make herself an equal match to them, no matter how hard or unlikely Jacob said it was. Somehow she just knew, deep down inside, that it was a part of her. Those two were more than just soldiers, more than simple assassins. They were _warriors_. And something inside her, some buried instinct hidden in the darkest recesses of her soul whispered up to her that, so was she.

An hour spent on the rifle range, repeating the same basic process from before left both Melanie and Jacob feeling much better with themselves, Melanie especially.

Of the more than two dozen different rifles she had started with, Melanie eventually settling on the Accuracy International AWSM. The dedicated sniper rifle, chambered for the slightly larger and more powerful three-thirty-eight Lapua Magnum round. Unlike in the pistol range, where she'd had to painstakingly pour over each and every minute detail in each individual handgun in order to eliminate them as a choice, Melanie had known the second she first picked up the rifle that it was hers.

Laying herself down on the ground, assuming the standard firing position that Jacob showed her, with legs slightly spread, feet pointed outward, left arm crossed in front of her to grip the stock's adjustable monopod for added stability, Melanie gazed down the length of the range through the sturdily built day-scope, carefully sighting her target in the cross-hairs.

Sending subtle mental commands to her cybernetic systems, she felt a rush of super-saturated blood surge into her head, flooding her mind with vastly heightened awareness and allowing her to gradually slow her breathing and heart-rate until it was virtually at a dead stand-still.

Almost a full five minutes passed between each individual beat of her artificial heart, Melanie's body ceasing all motion. She was so still that Jacob had a momentary flash of panic, a flash of memory of Sophia lying splayed out on the floor of that warehouse, her body stilling as the last of her blood pumped from her mangled and shredded throat seared through his mind.

He was about to reach out to her when the sudden, explosive bark of the rifle firing took him by surprise, forcing him back a step before he could catch himself. A small puff of acrid white smoke issued out from the muzzle break on the end of the barrel and Melanie's hand blurred as she smoothly cycled the bolt back, discharging the spent casing, swinging it back and snapping it into position, chambering the next round.

A second explosive roar issued from the end of the barrel, the rifle jerking back into Melanie's shoulder, the stock pressed up tight to absorb the recoil. Again her hand flew as she flawlessly cycled the bolt back then forward.

_Shit, I forgot about that part. Damn specialized engineering._ Jacob wiped a hand that trembled faintly across his brow, only mildly surprised to find tiny beads of sweat slicking his skin. Bianchi had told him before he'd gone in to see Melanie that because of her sniper role, the engineers had decided to recycle the same engineering process that allowed Elio Alboreto's cyborg, Marisa, function in her specialized role as a deep-sea assault operative; albeit with a few modifications and improvements.

To allow her to make deep, longer dives, Marisa possessed the engineered ability to saturate her bodily tissues with a vastly increased store of oxygenated blood. This ability enabled her to function without air for prolonged periods of up to half-an-hour.

Melanie's design incorporated the same concept but with a reduced duration in favour of the capacity to slip herself into a kind of "hibernation" mode that slowed her pulse and respiration to extremely low levels. This allowed her to remain almost perfectly still for several minutes at a time, vastly improving her natural accuracy. The downside was that it would take her almost a full minute to bring herself out of the trance-like state, leaving her momentarily vulnerable as she switched between the two modes.

Three additional shots ripped out from the end of the barrel of Melanie's rifle, leaving the clip empty and spent. As the last cracking echo began to fade, she stirred from her position and slowly turned to look up at him. Her yellowed eyes bore a strangely empty, vapid look to them, not entirely unlike the emotionless gaze of the bomb-squad cyborgs. It sent a sharp shiver running up Jacob's spine.

"Oh wow," Melanie moaned, squeezing her eyes shut and rubbing one hand over them to message the faint ache building just behind them. "That was…weird. What was that Jacob?"

"You must have naturally slipped into your engineered sniper mode. Do you not remember doing it?"

She frowned, considering. She tried to pull up some memory of what she had done just prior of falling into her trance. "I think so, I guess. I mean, I know I was doing it, but still, it was a pretty weird feeling.

"But I think I've made my decision Jacob," she beamed up at him, hands stroking the rifle beside with an almost tender, affectionate care. "This is _definitely_ the rifle I want."

Jacob frowned, his brow furrowing in thought. He glanced about, noting the almost full dozen different weapons still waiting for her to try out. "Are you sure? You haven't finished trying them all out. You shouldn't make any choices until you've actually shot all of them."

"I don't care," she protested, hands now tightening protectively to either side of the scope. "Jacob, I just know that this is my rifle. Don't ask me how, I just know. It feels so…_right_, in my hands."

Staring into her earnest, almost desperate eyes, Jacob felt himself wanting to give in, if only to make her happy.

Shrugging his shoulders dismissively, Jacob relented and gave in. "Alright, fine. At least you picked one of the best rifles here." Melanie's face lit up at his words, a beaming grin splitting her face from ear to ear.

Before the pair could continue their conversation, Jacob noticed another man approaching from further down the firing line. Jean Croce was wearing another of his customary, impeccably clean suits. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of thin-framed, mirrored sunglasses. Behind him, Rico tailed him faithfully, her Dragunov SVD marksman rifle slung over her shoulder, the end of the barrel topped by its slotted flash suppressor poking up above her blonde head.

"Nice to see you're taking things seriously, Jacob," Jean said when the two reached them and came to a stop. Jacob clenched his teeth tightly, the muscles of his jaw working beneath the skin. He glared up at the man, feeling his anger bubbling up within. "I'm paid to do a job, Jean and I do it."

"Glad to hear that," the man replied flatly. He glanced down at Melanie, who offered him a weak, nervous smile. He then glanced down to the end of the range, inspecting the wooden target that Melanie had been shooting into for the past half-hour.

"It looks like Bianchi and his people did their jobs right putting her conditioning together," Jean said, handing a pair of compact black binoculars to Jacob at his somewhat confused look.

Looking through the binoculars, Jacob stared down the range until he lined up his gaze with Melanie's targets, feeling his jaw drop open slightly as he did so.

In complete contrary to her dismal performance in the indoor range, Jacob was astounded to find that virtually every single one of Melanie's shots had impacted the target. The majority of them had landed well within the "kill-zone" and to his complete amazement he found that almost a dozen shots had completely torn out the dead center of the wooden form.

Lowering the binoculars slowly, Jacob flicked his eyes down at Melanie, who was staring up at him expectantly, her face frozen in an expression of patient hope. Jean was frowning at him and took the binoculars back with a look of confusion of his own.

"You look surprised; you weren't watching her shoot?" His voice carried a small hint of disapproval that sent waves of indignation roaring through Jacob. With supreme effort he managed to take a firm control of his building anger and resentment. "I didn't see the point Jean. We're not here for target practice. I just wanted her to spend the day picking out her weapons and getting a basic feel for the process of firing a weapon. For now, I don't much care whether or not she can hit the broad-side of a barn from ten feet away."

"Then I look forward to seeing what she can do once you _do_ start actually training her." From any other man, Jacob would have taken Jean's words as a compliment. From Jean, however, Jacob knew that it was merely a statement of impatient anticipation to have her combat-ready for deployment into the field.

"Don't worry Jean, you'll get your newest attack-dog soon enough," Jacob snapped. "It might take some time before she's ready for what Chief Lorenzo wants her specialized for, but she should be good enough for basic urban operations within a couple of weeks, three at the latest."

Jean watched him intently for several minutes, making Jacob slightly uncomfortable. Then, uncharacteristically, Jean removed his sunglasses, his cold blue eyes fixing Jacob with an intense, unwavering stare. "We need to talk."

Jacob nodded curtly, turning briefly to Melanie to offer her instructions to begin packing everything up, making certain she remembered to clean up her lane position. She set to it at once and Jacob followed Jean a short distance away, Rico remaining near Melanie at her handler's firm order.

"I'm going to assume that you're still interested in avenging Sophia's death?" Jean asked quietly once the two men were out of ear-shot of their cyborgs.

"You're damn right I am! I've been waiting four months for some word about that mess! What the Hell have you been doing all this time?"

Jean took his time in answering, carefully scrutinizing Jacob's face and expression, staring deeply into his eyes in an effort to evaluate the mind within. Finally, he continued, his voice pitched in a low whisper. "There have been complications in the investigation Jacob. Giacomo had his people cover their tracks with impeccable care. There was virtually nothing for us to find."

"Sounds like an excuse, to me," Jacob snapped viciously.

"Well there's more." Jean paused again before going on. "There's another reason we cut you loose for four months after the ambush."

Jacob looked at the other man in bewilderment. "What are you talking about? I was on bereavement leave."

"Yes, you were. But that wasn't the _only_ reason. I had you cut loose so that we could watch you' see where you ran, what you did when out from under our supervision."

"You were having me watched?" Jacob hissed, suddenly furious. He took a single step forward before Jean's raised hand halted him. Something in the man's eyes told Jacob to reign in his temper, that there was more in store that Jean had to tell him.

"Yes, out of necessity. I had to make sure you could be trusted. With so much perceived freedom, I had to see what you would do with it. There was potential for your opinion of the agency to be soured enough to push you into making…dangerous choices."

"You mean you were worried I'd jump ship and sign with Padania, or go to the press in retaliation?" Jacob guessed and correctly.

"Unfortunately, yes. It would not have been first time dissatisfaction with our methods have driven a handler into betraying us. Which brings me to my reason for speaking with you.

"There is a mole within Section Two."

"A mole?" Jacob said wonderingly. "You think that's how Padania was able to set up that trap?"

"I do. But that's not all. I had reason to suspect then, and am almost certain now, that the mole is one of our own."

For a moment Jacob didn't pick up on what Jean was insinuating, but eventually it clicked into place and his mouth fell open, Jacob's eyes widening in alarm as he gawked openly. "Holy shit, one of the other handlers?"

"Regrettably, yes. After several months of watching you stumble around in a drunken daze, I'm fairly confident that it isn't you. So I'm reading you in."

"Who else knows about this?" Jacob asked, quickly recovering his composure in the face of the monumental shock.

"Right now just myself, my brother, Chief Lorenzo, Elio and now yourself."

"That's all? I would have thought you would have trusted Hillshire with this at least. He _is_ one of the most senior handlers in the agency."

"Hillshire may be one of the best we have, but he can't be trusted. Not with this. As difficult as it is to accept, the simple fact is that his loyalties are and always have been exclusively to Triela, not the agency."

As much as it pained Jacob to admit, Jean was right. If not for Triela's own conditioned allegiance to the SWA keeping her leashed to the Italian government, Hillshire would have taken her and vanished a long time ago.

"I want you to keep your schedule open," Jean explained carefully, casting his gaze about to ensure they weren't being observed. "I may need to call on you in the event we dig anything up. More than likely whatever evidence we find will be of the extremely time-sensitive nature and we will need to act quickly."

"Yeah, I understand. Good thing I just got back from a four month vacation then, huh?" Jacob said with a bitter, sardonic chuckle.

"My thoughts exactly," Jean said with a sardonic grin of his own. "Now let's get back. And just so we're clear, your cyborg is not to know anything about this. They can barely be trusted to keep their emotions in check at the best of times. We can't afford to have her throwing suspicious looks at everyone she comes across."

"Not a problem."

Melanie had finished packing and cleaning up after herself by the time the two men returned. She fidgeted slightly, hands kneading the straps of the full-sized duffle bag she held in front of her. By this time, the sun had begun to slip below the horizon, casting rapidly deepening shadows across the agency grounds.

Together, the two _fratello_ pairs left the rifle range, Jacob politely turning down Jean's offer of a ride back to the main building the modified golf cart parked along the perimeter. The walk back would afford Melanie more time to get used to her body and Jacob felt that he himself could use the extra exercise.

The wind had died off at some point during their time on the range, the cloud cover having thickened into a thick, unbroken mass spreading clear across the sky. There was a faint smell of ozone tainting the air, speaking of rain on the horizon. The temperature had also dropped significantly, making Melanie shiver faintly at the biting chill.

It was fully dark before Jacob and Melanie stepped through the doors into the cafeteria, having stopped to deliver their bag of weapons back to the armoury and for Jacob to pick up a second packet of paperwork to fill out later.

Dinner was just beginning to wind down as they entered and took their meal from the attending cooks. Most of the other girls and staff had already finished and moved on, but a small smattering of people still persisted. Those like Jacob and Melanie who had been late reaching the cafeteria, or those who simply chose to linger later in small groups, heads together in quiet conversation.

Jacob ate in silence, head lowered over his plate and methodically shovelling his food down with barely a pause to taste it. He smiled inwardly at the sudden thought the abject horror Pagani, who was himself a gourmet cook, would have undoubtedly felt at the sight.

"So what kind of training will I be doing?" Melanie asked suddenly, drawing Jacob's attention up from his meal.

"What?"

"You told Mr. Croce that I would be starting my actual training tomorrow. I was just curious about what to expect."

Jacob swallowed his mouthful of seafood _risotto_, setting his fork down and wiping his mouth on his napkin before responding. "Oh that. Well for now, most of your training will focus around getting your firearms proficiency up to scratch. So expect to spend a lot of time down in the indoor range.

"You'll attend normal school lessons with the other girls later in the morning through to the afternoon. We'll be back out on the rifle range for the rest of the afternoon and then after dinner, we'll spend extra time on whatever you struggled with most during the day."

"When do I start learning how to track people through the woods and mountains?" Melanie asked eagerly, picking daintily at her food.

"Not until I decide you're good enough to be placed on the normal mission list. You're first priority is getting yourself combat-worthy. _Then_ we can worry about you're specialized roles." Focusing on Melanie as he finished speaking, Jacob frowned at the sight of her virtually untouched plate. "What's wrong?"

"What?" she asked, blinking up at him in puzzlement. "Nothing, why?"

"You've hardly touched your food," he replied, indicating the plate in front of her. "Not like it, or something?"

Giving a little laugh of relieved understanding, she waved off his concern casually. "Oh; no, it's okay. I'm just not really hungry." This made Jacob frown in mild concern, realizing that the only thing she had had all day was a single glass of fruit juice. He said as much, which wiped the smile from her face. "You need to maintain your energy levels or your implants will start to malfunction and shut down."

"But I'm not hungry. Really Jacob, I feel fine."

"I don't care. I'm not having you weaken yourself out some neurotic female fixation on dieting, or some other load of crap," he barked quietly, jabbing one finger onto the table just in front of her plate. "Now eat."

Taken aback by her handler's vehemence, Melanie meekly complied, lowering her head to avoid his heated gaze, while determinedly clearing her plate with slow, deliberate care.

After they were both finished with their meal and had turned over their trays of dishes to the kitchen crew, Jacob led Melanie back to her room, pausing outside the door. She watched him curiously as he turned to face her, hands stuffed deeply into his pockets.

"I want to you to do a few laps of the compound before you turn in for the night, so get changed and come back out."

Nodding in understanding, she waited as Jacob pushed the door open, closing it softly behind her. She strode over to the wardrobe and sifted around until she found a suitable pair of black track pants.

Stripping out of her jeans and pulling off her layered shirts, Melanie pulled on the slacks and after peeling apart the two t-shirts, slipped the black short-sleeved one back on. Kicking off her shoes, she realized with sudden dismay that she was going to have to attempt wearing one of the pairs of running shoes.

Sighing dejectedly, she picked the footwear up off the floor and sat down on the edge of her bed. Slipping the shoes onto her feet, she gripped the laces of one tightly in both hands. She was ashamed at her own nervousness. It was just a pair of shoes. She was built to fight against blood-thirsty, crazed terrorists who would try to kill her; yet the simple prospect of having to tie up a pair of shoes left her filled with dread and apprehension.

Taking a deep, steadying breath, Melanie whispered to herself reassuringly, trying to bolster her courage. _Okay Melanie, just calm down. You can do this. How hard can it be?_ Gritting her teeth in determination, she got to work.

Jacob growled wordlessly in the back of his throat, checking his watch again. A full ten minutes had passed since he'd sent Melanie in to get changed. _Jesus Christ, how long does it take to put on a damned pair of sweat-pants?_

He was contemplating barging in to demand what was keeping her when he heard the faint _click_ of the door opening. Glancing over, he saw the door swing inward several inches and then stop. Bewildered, he turned to face the door and saw a thin sliver of Melanie's face peeking through the cracked opening. Her face was burning read with embarrassment and her tawny eyes gleamed with unshed tears in the faint light.

J…Jacob?" she mumbled softly, her lower lips trembling. "I…I need…your help."

"What is it, what's wrong?" he asked in sudden concern.

"Can…can you…come in here for a minute?" she pleaded, a flurry of conflicting emotions shadowing her features. She was clearly embarrassed and didn't want anyone else seeing her. She was also apprehensive and hesitant to reveal the source of that embarrassment to him. That made him suddenly leery, worried about some kind of…feminine issue.

_Oh Christ, that's just what I need. I've heard Victor complaining about how difficult Triela can get when she's having her period. I do _not_ want to have this conversation._ Warily, Jacob slowly nodded, waiting as she withdrew her head and pulled the door open for him. Stepping through with almost an exaggerated care, as if expecting a Padania ambush to be waiting for him within, Jacob entered the small room, Melanie softly shutting the door behind him.

Casting a quick glance around the room showed nothing terribly amiss. Steeling himself, Jacob folded his arms across his chest and adopted a stern, demanding look and tone. "Alright, now what's wrong?"

Melanie's head hung low in shame, scrubbing her hands across her cheeks angrily as tears of frustration began to leak from her eyes. "I…I can't…" She broke off, unable to make herself go on, her entire face and neck burning red.

"Can't what?" Jacob demanded, getting slightly impatient now.

"I can't tie my shoes," she blurted out in a rush, squeezing her eyes shut, unwilling to meet his gaze.

Jacob looked at her in incredulous wonder, his eyes finally flicking down towards the floor. Sure enough, the laces of her white running shoes dangled out to the sides, undone. He also noticed then that the drawstring to her black sweat pants was also still dangling down in front of her.

"What do you mean you can't tie your shoes; why not?"

Melanie held her hands out in answer, still refusing to meet his eye. "My hands; I can't…they won't work properly. I've tried and I've tried but they just won't move the way I tell them to. I know what I'm supposed to do, but my stupid fingers just won't do it."

The relief that washed through Jacob was so profound that he let slip a barking laugh before he could stop himself. Melanie's head snapped up at the sound of his laughter, her mouth falling open in horrified humiliation. He was _laughing_ at her? She finally worked up the courage to confess to him, her handler, the man she was conditioned to trust and care for, and all he could do was _laugh_? She felt deep, wracking sobs bubbling up within her, unable to bear the shame that threatened to consume her.

Seeing the clear distress in her open, innocent face, Jacob quickly composed himself, biting back a curse at his own incompetence. "I'm sorry, that was completely inappropriate. I was just relieved, that's all. I though that," he suddenly reconsidered what he was about to say in mid-sentence, realizing that telling her what he _had _thought the problem was would send her melting into the floor in burning mortification. "Never mind what I thought. I was just expecting something…worse."

"What could be worse than this?" she demanded, her shame flashing to irritated anger. "My stupid body isn't working right! How can I be of use to you killing terrorists if I can't even tie my own shoes?"

"Melanie, there's nothing wrong with your body. You're just not used to controlling it, is all. It takes you girls some time to adjust to the different ways the cybernetic implants operate and interact with each other."

"Oh," she said simply, her face studiously blank. "I…see. Well how long is it going to take? Because you _cannot_ imagine how frustrating this is."

"The first generation cyborgs could take a couple of weeks before they had fully mastered their new bodies," Jacob explained patiently, his voice taking on an even, lecturing tone he used when instructing training classes. "You second generation girls tend to adapt quicker, so I'd say within a week at the latest you'll be fine."

"Oh, great. So I've got to put up with this for an entire _week_?" she pouted, folding her arms beneath her breasts. "Well, you're going to have to…to help me then." Her face heated again, her embarrassment returning.

Sighing, Jacob nodded in understanding and Melanie sat down on the edge of the bed. Kneeling down in front of her, he swiftly began tying up her laces for her. "So is this what you were doing in here all this time; trying to tie your shoes?" She nodded mutely, not wanting to trust her voice.

"Are you having any other problems?" he asked idly, not looking up from his task. This was of a profound blessing to Melanie, whose face flamed at the sudden memory of her earlier…issues when attempting to get dressed. "Um…not really. Just some minor…coordination issues. I managed to work it out on my own though."

"Ok, good to know. There, all done," he said, straightening. A thin smile lit up her face as Melanie rose to her feet and crossed to the door. Jacob called out to her, pulling her up short. She turned back to look at him wonderingly, one hand resting lightly on the handler.

"Unless you want to spend more time keeping your pants from falling around your knees than running, you're going to want to tighten that drawstring." He pointed at her waist, indicating the dangling cords swaying with each movement.

"Oh…uh, that…that's okay; I'll manage," she fumbled. Having Jacob tie her shoes was one thing but _this_? Although, when she thought about it, he _had_ already seen her completely naked anyway, and besides, he was her handler.

"I'll just teach you a really simple knot so you can do that yourself," Jacob continued, bursting her pleasant vision of him leaning over her closely, his gentle breathing ruffling her hair, his hands working slowly and methodically along the waistband of her pants, fingertips gently brushing against the soft, silken skin of her stomach.

"S-S-sure, that s-s-sounds…good." She watched him arch one bushy eyebrow at her inquisitively, praying with all her might that he wouldn't notice how her breathing had quickened slightly, her heart fluttering in her chest. Thankfully, if Jacob noticed anything amiss with her, he simply dismissed it.

"It's called a "reef-knot" and it's simple enough that you should be able to do it even with your dexterity problems. You just take both strings in your hands, cross the left string over the right one, and…"

After a few practise attempts, Melanie found that the simple knot _was_ easy enough for her to manage. She made sure to keep it loose enough that she would be able to undo it the way Jacob indicated, by simply pushing both sides together to open it up in the middle, allowing her room to poke her fingertip through and pull it apart. She felt such a surge of joy and pride the first time she managed it that she almost fainted with the force of the sensations rippling through her.

"Good, that should do it then. Now get moving. We've wasted more time than I wanted and I want you to do five full laps of the entire compound."

"F-F-Five?" Melanie said, gaping in shock. "Of the _entire_ compound? But it's dark out; what if I run into a…a tree, or something?"

"You're a combat cyborg, I'm sure you'll hurt the tree more than it will hurt you. And yes, five laps of the compound. You said yourself you're having problems with your coordination; the best way to get used to using your body is to, well, use it. So get moving."

Resigned to her fate and deeply regretting having confessed, even in part, to her problems while getting dressed, Melanie slipped out the door and set off for the agency's front gates, where she would turn to begin circling the expansive grounds.

"I'll be here waiting for you," Jacob called out after her. "And hurry up; the sooner you finish, the sooner you get to take a shower and go to bed."

Nearly three hours later, Melanie flopped face-down on her mattress, every synthetic muscle in her body aching from her almost eight-mile run. She sighed into her pillow, shivering occasionally as beads of rapidly cooling water slid down her neck and shoulders from her still damp hair. It had taken her almost ten minutes to strip out of her sweat-soaked clothes before stepping into the shower.

She smiled thinly at the memory of the water, turned to just a hair below scalding temperatures, cascading down her body, the heat soaking into her skin and soothing her protesting muscles. She'd nearly passed out then and there in supreme pleasure and contentment as the first streams ran down her and had had to grip the sides of the stall to keep her knees from buckling under her.

The best part, and she had to admit she was rather glad now that Jacob had sent her out so late, was that the bathroom had been completely empty when she got there. Without any of the other cyborgs to bother her, or for her to bother, she'd been able to indulge herself to her heart's content. As such, almost half-an-hour had gone by before Melanie had finally and reluctantly shut off the water. Jacob had been less than impressed when she had at long last returned to her room, where he was still waiting outside her door. But frankly, she didn't care. It had _totally_ been worth it.

Melanie giggled into her pillow, thinking about the disapproving scowl twisting his features, her glazed eyes and blissfully unaware expression an impenetrable suit of armour against his stern rebuke about her wasting time.

But now, her body sinking softly into the mattress, the full force of her exhaustion was descending down on her. With the comforting heat of the shower fading into nothing more than a pleasant memory, the aches and pains were returning with a vengeance.

Flicking off her slippers with her toes, Melanie squirmed around until she was able to slide under the sheets, instantly flipping herself about to wrap the thick, down-filled comforter tightly about herself. She moaned in rapturous delight as the new warmth of the blankets slowly seeped into her and, curling into a tight foetal position, slipped instantly into blissful slumber.

25


	4. Chapter 03: Dagger's Gaze

Chapter 03: Dagger's Gaze

Melanie's breath came in sharp, ragged gasps as she loped down the narrow corridor of undressed cinderblocks. A cold, nervous sweat beaded and slid down her forehead and back, making her skin itch almost maddeningly. Her palms were damp inside the thin leather fingerless gloves she wore.

Adjusting her grip on her compact handgun, its flat-black finish a match to her gloves, Melanie flicked a quick glance to the left, where her partner Allison was keeping easy pace with her. Almost three years her senior and nearly half a foot taller, Allison was dressed in simple dark jeans and a V-neck shirt, along with navy-blue cross trainers. Her relaxed, casual clothing was in stark contrast to Melanie's own outfit of charcoal gray camo-patterned cargo pants, black Kevlar tactical vest over a plain black shirt and combat boots.

Casting another glance over at her partner, Melanie noted Allison's rapid hand-signal, motioning her towards one of the two doors ahead of them. Standing directly opposite each other, the doors were of plain plywood construction mounted into reinforced, heavy-gauge steel frames. Cheap brass knobs gleamed in the morning light, almost seeming to glow faintly in the otherwise shadowed hallway.

Bobbing her head in reply, Melanie darted up next to the right-hand door. Pressing up tight to the wall, she sucked in several deep, steadying breaths in an attempt to calm her jittery nerves and racing heart. A thousand churning thoughts whirled through Melanie's head, tangled into a snarling maelstrom that threatened to shatter her fragile composure.

Breathing in and out with a slow, steady rhythm, Melanie whispered reassuringly to herself. _Calm down Melanie, you can do this. Just like Jacob taught you._

The sudden echoing crash of smashed, splintering wood announced Allison's forced entry into the room opposite and served to refocus Melanie's mind. With a final breath, she steadied her grip on her pistol and spun around in front of the door.

Taking a quick step back to position herself, Melanie gritted her teeth in fierce determination before launching herself forward. Lowering her head and tucking in her shoulder, she slammed into the door with bone-crushing force, feeling the plywood crack, splinter and finally explode inward. Tiny wood chips and dust bloomed in a small cloud in front of the now open portal and Melanie wrinkled her nose as she sucked in a lungful, irritating her sinuses and airways.

Maintaining her forward momentum, Melanie pitched herself down into a smooth combat roll, tucking in her elbows and knees so that she came up to her feet in a compact crouched position. Immediately her hands snapped up, eyes locking on the first visible target that presented itself.

A young man of obvious Italian descent faced her from behind an old, thread-bare couch that had torn open along the edge of one arm, exposing the foam padding within. A SIG Sauer P-two-twenty handgun with stainless steel slide and body was clutched tightly in the man's hand, already levelled at Melanie.

Reacting on instinct, Melanie squeezed the trigger of her own handgun, feeling the minimal explosive recoil of her smaller weapon shudder through her hand and arm. The bullet ripped through the air, leaving a thin distortion wave that was just barely visible to Melanie's cybernetically enhanced eyes.

Much to Melanie's dismay, the bullet went slightly wide, grazing almost harmlessly along the side of the man's face. In desperation Melanie squeezed off two more rounds, both missing their lethal mark. The first struck the man in the shoulder, the second in the hip.

Growling in frustration, Melanie fired off a fourth round that finally scored a killing blow, taking the man square in the chest.

Flinging herself to the side, she swung her aim around to sweep the room, finding three more hostiles all facing her with weapons drawn. She drew in a single deep breath and held it, squinting slightly to see better in the mottled patchwork of shadows and sunlight.

Firing off a rapid succession of bullets, she struggled to adjust her aim on the fly as several rounds went wildly awry, impacting the furniture, walls and ceiling. She silently voiced a vicious curse as she noticed one round slam into the stomach of an older woman that was knelt down behind one of the hostiles, her steel-gray hair pulled back into a loose bun at the base of her skull. The woman's kindly, deeply lined face was frozen in an expression of pained terror.

Casting a quick evaluating gaze about the room, Melanie saw only two enemies were left. One was leaning out from around the empty doorframe that led into a small bedroom. The second man was huddled behind an overturned table, a young girl of no more than ten or eleven years clutched tightly to his chest, one arm wrapped tightly across the girl's throat to hold her in place.

Taking careful aim, Melanie shot off one of her four remaining rounds at the man in the doorway more of a means of forcing him back into the bedroom as opposed to actually intending to kill him. Much to her surprise and grim delight, the bullet struck the edge of the frame and deflected outwards, punching into the man's skull just above his left eye socket. An instant kill.

Flicking her hands to the right, she brought her gun to bear on the sole surviving hostile. Tears showed on the girl's face, streaming down her softly rounded cheeks, one lip puffed out and split open from an earlier blow.

A litany of tactical information and stratagems imparted to her by Jacob streamed through Melanie's mind, telling her the most efficient course of action available to her. The girl was positioned directly in front of the man, blocking all of his vital areas. There was only one option. _Sorry kid, but this is the only way. You're young, you'll heal._

Snapping the barrel of her gun lower, Melanie fired off a single round to where she judged the girl's left leg would be, hoping that the bullet landed in the fleshy outer thigh where she'd intended it. Unable to support her own weight on her injured leg, the girl would have suddenly slumped in the man's grasp, throwing him off balance and exposing him for a few vital moments.

Readjusting her aim to target the man, Melanie squeezed off her last two rounds, both tearing through the man's chest. The first though, Melanie saw, had drilled its way through the girl's shoulder first, before finally impacting the man behind her.

Choking back a wave of bitter self-recrimination, Melanie tore the empty clip from her gun and began fumbling around for a new one.

Why couldn't she do this properly? She remembered her training; everything Jacob taught her was fresh and clear in her mind, but still she made these critical, often fatal, errors. That old woman probably wouldn't survive to be evacuated to a hospital and that little girl would spend most of her life traumatized from the memory of being shot. Twice.

Frustration burned through Melanie's mind with a savage vehemence that left her trembling. Her hands shook so badly that the spare clip rattled against the heel of her pistol grip. For some reason the stupid thing just wouldn't line up.

Struggling to load the fresh clip, her teeth gritted in a fierce snarl, Melanie stumbled back towards that smashed-in door leading back out into the corridor. Her attention focused solely on the gun and clip in her hands, Melanie wasn't paying attention to where she was going and stepped down on a spent casing. The tiny brass tube rolled under her foot and with a short, sudden yelp of alarm, she felt her feet sweep out from under her, sending her crashing painfully to the ground.

Dazzling mottled lights exploded in front of Melanie's eyes as her head slammed into the concrete floor. Pain seared through her skull like a knife being driven into her head, digging and grinding relentlessly into bone.

Dazed, her vision swimming nauseously, Melanie slowly clambered back to her feet. She muttered a growling stream of curses like the ones she'd heard some of the other agency staff members sometimes using. She didn't understand half of them, but she had to admit that the emotional relief uttering them provided proved to be slightly calming.

Leaning against a rickety old table, the cracked and peeling wood stain long ago turned a pale and sickly green, Melanie sucked in several deep, steadying breaths before sliding home a second spare clip that she pulled from her tactical vest. The fresh clip she had been trying to load before had skittered across the floor, knocked from her grasp when she hit the floor.

Feeling the slow, inexorable ticking of the clock as time marched on, Melanie lurched away from the table and hurried out into the hallway. She pulled back the slide on her gun as she moved, slamming it back to chamber the first round.

She found Allison waiting for her out in the corridor, a faint look of anxiety shadowing her soft blue eyes.

The question hovering, as yet unspoken in the air, was clear and obvious and Melanie interrupted just as Allison's lips began to part to give it voice, her words clipped and sharp: "I'm fine. Let's go."

Melanie darted past her partner, heading deeper into the concrete complex. Allison's firm and unyielding grip on her upper arm forced her to stop and turn to face the slim brunette.

"You aren't fine Melanie," Allison snapped disapprovingly, her face creased with growing concern. "You're bleeding."

Pressing her fingers to the side of her head where Allison was indicating, Melanie found that she was right, as the tips came away stained red. Irritated frustration flashed through her and she angrily wiped her hand off on her pants' leg. "It's nothing Allison; I told you, I'm fine. I just tripped, is all. Now come on, we're wasting time."

Pulling free of Allison's grasp, Melanie managed two steps down the hall before Allison's hand clamped down on her shoulder, jerking her to a halt and spinning her around again. Her irritation growing, Melanie tore herself free and threw a withering glare up at her fellow cyborg, who matched her glare with a fierce scowl of her own.

"Would you slow down for just two seconds?" Allison snapped, pausing after to let out an exasperated sigh. Leaning back up against the wall, Allison stared down at Melanie, shaking her head softly. "Jeeze Melanie, you're heart rate is through the roof; you keep going at that pace and you're going to have a panic attack or something. What's with the rush, anyway? You got somewhere else you have to be?"

Melanie stared back at Allison in mild shock. She couldn't quite believe what she was hearing and it left her in bewildered confusion. This was potentially the most important mission Melanie had ever been on. She was already making enough mistakes – which Jacob would be furious about, and now Allison was suggesting that they slack off even more?

Stepping back, Melanie regarded her friend with open incredulity, her frustration boiling over into a flash of erupting anger. "What's the rush? How can you even ask that Allison? In case you've forgotten, we _are_ being timed, remember? We're already running late enough as it is in finishing this; we don't have time to just stand around relaxing!"

"And how much later do you think we're going to be if you suddenly just start _freaking_ out and I have to wait around for you to calm down?" Allison snapped back in stern retort. "It's not going to kill us to take a minute to relax and collect ourselves. Brian is _always_ drilling into my head the value of patience when on mission."

Melanie twisted her mouth into a sour frown at Allison's brief lecture. It was more than slightly ironic for Allison, who could – and would if her handler Brian allowed her – drink her own body's weight worth of caffeine per day, to begin touting the value of patience and of taking things slow.

Fortunately for both girls, the momentary pause in Melanie's head-long dash and frenetic rush had served the purpose of breaking her momentum. Already Melanie could feel herself starting to calm down. The hyper-charged, adrenaline-fuelled buzz roaring through her veins and clouding the clarity of her thoughts subsided, leaving her suddenly and shockingly wearied.

Realizing how close her own anxiety had brought her to physically lashing out at Allison, Melanie hung her head in shame. She sagged back, leaning against the wall opposite her friend, unwilling to meet Allison's eyes. "I'm sorry Allison, you're right. It's just," she paused, reaching up to wipe at the small trickle of blood from her head wound. "I try so hard to prove to Jacob and everyone that I can do this and I only wind up screwing something up anyway and that just makes me try even harder and then I screw up even worse and by then everyone is completely pissed off at me so I try _even_ harder and then…"

"Melanie," Allison interjected, cutting her off short and snapping her attention back to the slim brunette. "You're rambling."

Crestfallen, Melanie once more lowered her gaze until she was staring morosely at her own toes. "Oh. Sorry. See what I mean?"

"It's okay Melanie. Really, it is. _Everyone_ makes mistakes; you, me, everyone. Even Triela has been known to land herself in a mess or two. It. Happens. All it takes is practice and eventually you _will_ get better.

"Now then," Allison chirped, her face reverting to its almost standard beaming grin, her eyes flashing with mirth. "If you've calmed down enough, what do you say about us finishing this up? We've got history class later, remember?"

Melanie barked a quick, genuine laugh of untainted amusement, bobbing her head in reply. "Sure thing, Allison; we certainly don't want to keep Mr. Pagani waiting."

Allison chuckled in response, loping forward down the corridor, taking the lead position. "Yeah, no kidding. He _is_ such a stickler for punctuality, after all."

Both girls feeling much more relaxed and comfortable, they proceeded onward, deeper into the concrete and plywood complex; guns at the ready, determination burning in their eyes.

* * *

Jean stared down at the grainy colour monitor, his thin lips contorted into a fierce scowl of disgust. He spoke without bothering to look up, addressing the man leaning casually against the back wall of the viewing platform. "Pathetic Jacob. Absolutely pathetic. She's posting less than a twenty-five percent accuracy rating and she's killed three of the seven hostage targets. Completely unacceptable. What exactly have you been doing this past week?"

"My job, Croce and you damn well know it," Jacob growled, thick arms folded across his chest. "It's not my fault Melanie doesn't seem capable of retaining anything I teach her. It's like it goes in one ear, straight out the other."

"Well you're going to have to try harder," Jean snapped irritably. He leaned back in his utilitarian aluminum-famed chair, slipping off his mirrored sunglasses to massage the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. "She's useless to the agency like this."

"Hey, that's not fair Jean. Cut the girl some slack; it's only her first week." The third occupant of the watch tower, Allison's handler Brian, piped up from his chosen spot near the end of the low bank of monitoring equipment, binoculars held loosely in one hand. The tall, well-built Irishman loomed slightly over the much slimmer Croce, who took in the other man's green-eyed glare with an expression of cold severity.

"It may not be fair McDonnell, but it _is_ the truth. The girl is incompetent. After a week of training she has yet to show any sign of improvement with her small-arms' proficiency. We can not deploy someone who is a greater threat to our own people as she is to our enemies.

"And it isn't my job to decide whether or not we can "cut her some slack". That call can only be made by Minister Petris."

Fuming silently, Brian glanced away, flicking an exploratory glance over the sprawling open-air concrete complex that was the agency's urban assault training course. Allison and Melanie were just exiting the almost maze-like structure. Side-by-side, heads close together, likely reviewing their respective performances.

"Are you just going to stand there Jacob?" Brian demanded suddenly, turning towards his colleague.

Arching one bushy black eyebrow at the other man, Jacob sniffed lightly, shrugging his shoulders in disdainful indifference. "What would you have me do, Brian?"

Brian lurched forward, his anger surging to the fore in response to Jacob's flippant tone. "How about standing up and defending Melanie, for one? For Christ's sake man, are you even listening to what Jean is saying about her?"

"Of course I am," Jacob replied, looking almost bored with the conversation. "I'm not deaf, you know?"

"So?" Brian growled impatiently.

"So what?"

"So how about defending your partner?"

Jacob sighed, closing his eyes and tilting his head back to rest on one of the wooden support posts holding up the tower's shallow-peaked roof. "Frankly Brian, from what I've been seeing of Melanie's performance, there's not exactly anything worth defending. Like Jean said: might not be fair, but it's the truth."  
"I can't believe I'm hearing this." Brian seethed with indignant fury, his broiling anger causing his North-Irish accent to thicken considerably, mangling his Italian almost to the point of being incomprehensible. "What the hell is wrong with you? You _never_ would have treated Sophia like this."

Sudden anger and resentment sizzled through Jacob's veins, his head snapping back down to level a vicious glare at Brian, hands balling into tight fists at his sides, knuckles cracking faintly under the strain.

"Sophia was actually capable of learning what I had to teach her," he spat. "She practically came out of the box ready to be deployed into the field. Melanie, on the other hand, is proving to be a complete waste of time."

"Jesus Jacob, she's only been active for a _week_ and you're ready to write her off? How about showing a little God-damned patience?"

Deciding to step in before the argument escalated to the two men exchanging physical blows, Jean interjected smoothly, his voice cold and clinical in its presentation of the facts. "The problem, Brian, isn't that Melanie is making mistakes; even if they are often proving to be potentially fatal ones. No, the problem is that she continues to make the _same_ mistakes, over and over again, without any sign of improvement.

"You claim that we should just exercise some patience with Melanie's failings and wait for her to start showing improvement. Well unfortunately we can't afford to devote the necessary time and resources to do that. Melanie, like every other cyborg, Allison included, is an investment made by Minister Petris on behalf of the government. Between the initial conversion process and the continuing training regimes required to field our girls, it costs almost seven-million Euros to achieve combat-readiness for _each_ cyborg.

"You may not like to hear this, but the simple fact of the matter is that, every day we spend waiting for Melanie to achieve that level of combat-readiness, the investment on her creation grows, without any returns being made. Right now she's a monetary sink-hole."

"And how long did it take for you to get Rico up to agency standards?" Brian asked scathingly, his whole body beginning to tremble from the bottled rage churning just beneath the surface, roaring to be released.

"That's irrelevant," Jean replied simply.

"Is it?"

"Yes, it is. Rico is a First Generation cyborg. Her physical co-ordination and mental programming were vastly below current Second Generation standards. She lacked the implanted knowledge of fire-arms and tactical training that every new cyborg receives."

"So just because Melanie is a Second-Gen, she's automatically expected to be perfect, right from the start? Well, I guess I'll remember that so the next time Allison messes up while on mission, I can just put a bullet in her head and save us all the trouble of wasting our time in correcting her."

Jean frowned, cold blue eyes sending icy daggers across the intervening space between the two men. "Spare me the dramatic, Brian. I already told you: the problem is that Melanie isn't improving. At all."

Standing with feet spread shoulder-width apart, shoulders squared, Brian held Jean's frosty glare for several long, tense moments, before turning his head to once more regard Jacob. "Don't suppose I need to ask what you plan to do if they decide to simple toss her aside, do I?"

Jacob managed a thin, sardonic grin, once again leaning his head back to rest on the wooden post behind him. "Great thing about living in a world that's heading down the shitter, Brian: there are always plenty of replacements to be had."

Appalled, though not surprised, by Jacob's flippant disregard for Melanie's life, Brian shook his head in open disgust at the man. "Christ, I don't know why Lorenzo even bothered dragging your sorry ass back here."

The sudden explosion of barking laughter from Jacob took both Brian and Jean aback. His whole upper body trembled with the rumbling force of the chuckles and Jacob reached up with one hand to wipe imaginary tears from his dark eyes.

Still chuckling softly, Jacob lowered his gaze until he met Brian eyes. His voice, when he finally replied, was dripping with self-recriminating bitterness that left Brian gaping in astonishment. "Well what do you know? _Finally_ we find something we agree upon, Brian. It's funny you should ask that, because I've been asking myself the very same thing all _damn_ week."

Shocked at the vehemence of Jacob's words, Brian's gaze flicked back and forth between him and Jean, who met his eyes with a flat, expressionless stare.

Finally, feeling an irresistible urge to be just…away, Brian turned on his heel and stalked out of the observation booth, his heavy footfalls on the steel stairs sending swindling, echoing clangs back up to the two men remaining.

Several minutes passed in which Jacob and Jean remained silent, the later watching the other man out of the corner of his eye. Finally, giving voice to a slightly wearied sight, Jean replaced his mirrored sunglasses, turning to switch off the security monitors.

"So?" Jacob asked, breaking the brittle and distinctly uncomfortable silence.

"What?"

"How long do I have until you decide Melanie isn't worth keeping?"

Jean frowned, turning from his task to meet Jacob's flat gaze. "I told you, that's not my call. It's minister…"

"Okay fine, whatever," Jacob snapped, interrupting, rolling his eyes exasperatedly. "How long do I have until you recommend to Petris that _she_ make the call to scrap Melanie?"

Jean said nothing for a time, carefully studying the other man. Then, "Three weeks. You have until the end of her first month of operation to get her up to the agency's acceptable standards. After that, we just can't keep spending money on her."

"Gotcha. But I'm warning you right now Jean: there isn't a whole lot more I can do that I'm not already doing. We're already logging in almost three times the amount of range time as any other _fratello_."

Jean glanced away, a hint of genuine emotion creeping into the edges of his voice as he answered. "I'm sorry Jacob, but unfortunately for you both, that's not my problem."

Nodding to himself in understanding, Jacob levered himself away from the wall, stretching his arms above his head until he heard and felt the satisfying crack of cramped joints loosening. "Yeah well, don't worry about it. Like you said: not your problem."

Glancing over the edge of the platform's chest-high walls, Jacob watched as Brian and Allison strode off together towards where the man's bright red Audi RS6 was parked.

"Well, guess I might as well head down there and see what I can do," Jacob sighed, acting like a man resigned to his fate as he slowly ascended the high wooden platform on the final approach to the gallows. Jean nodded a terse farewell before Jacob slipped out of sight, descending the stairs to where his cyborg awaited.

* * *

Melanie's head pounded with a deep, throbbing lance of pain that had her teeth clenched tightly, the corded synthetic muscles in her jaw working visibly beneath the taught, Kevlar-reinforced skin. The bleeding had stopped, small blessings, already beginning to dry in a broad sheet down the right side of her face, matting her red-gold hair into awkward, snarled clumps that had started to itch and tug uncomfortably.

She strode from the roofless complex that was the Social Welfare Agency's urban assault training course several steps behind Allison, both girls feeling decidedly more subdued than they had been earlier.

Glancing up from the tract of dirt a foot in front of her toes that she had been staring at blankly, Melanie saw Allison reach up with one hand to dab lightly at the shallow, inch-long gash running across the side of her left cheek.

Seeing the brunette's fingertips come away lightly smeared with blood, Melanie felt her stomach give a sickening lurch as guilt seared through her. She still couldn't believe how stupid she had been, allowing that shot to go wide.

"Don't say it, Melanie," Allison said, just as Melanie was opening her mouth. She promptly snapped her mouth shut with a dull _click_ of her teeth.

"I almost shot you, Allison."

"You did _not_ almost shoot me, Melanie." Allison twisted around to offer the younger girl a reassuring smile. "It's just a tiny nick from a piece of shrapnel, that's it. It's no big deal, really."

"Well it _is_ a big deal to me, Allison," Melanie retorted, her emotions churning up inside of her, threatening to burst free. The whole exercise had been one long string of screw-up, culminating in the errant bullet that had caused Allison's bleeding wound.

"I could have seriously hurt you, and it's all because I can't stop making the same _damn_ stupid mistakes. I hate this! I'm sick of screwing up in even the simplest of things. Nothing I do goes right. I'm useless!"

"Melanie, stop it!" Allison snapped, turning around fully to face her fellow cyborg, hands planted on her slim, shapely hips. "You are _not_ useless and don't you _ever_ say that again! Sure, you make mistakes, but I told you, we all do! You'll get better, but these things don't just happen overnight. You need to have some patience with yourself.

"Besides, I've seen the way you handle that rifle of yours on the ranges. Give yourself a month or so and Rico will be hard pressed to keep up with your scores. So trust me, you're far from useless."

Melanie squirmed uncomfortably under the unfamiliar words of praise, feeling her face heat slightly in embarrassment.

She was saved from further embarrassment as Allison's gaze suddenly darted to the side, her eyes locking on something over Melanie's shoulder. Immediately perking up, Allison's face split into a broad, beaming grin and she waved enthusiastically towards the man approaching from the direction of the observation tower.

"Hey Brian."

Allison's handler dipped his head in a brief, acknowledging nod to her wave, striding purposely across the gravel ground to stop before the two girls. His pale green eyes took in the pair in a single glance, his gaze critical and sharply evaluating.

Hands stuffed casually into the pockets of a pair of slightly faded, loose fitting denim jeans, he slowly and casually drew one out, lifting it to point inquisitively at Allison's cheek.

"How's your face?"

"What, this?" Allison asked offhandedly, scoffing at his concern. She waved one hand in a slightly teasing, placating gesture, lips curled into a faint grin. "It's nothing Brian, just a scratch. Not even worth stitches."

"Glad to hear it. We'll still get it checked out later though." He then turned his gaze towards Melanie, who shrank into herself in anticipation of the pending firestorm of anger. She could only imagine how upset he would be with her at having nearly shot his cyborg in the head. Her only experience being with Jacob's often unpredictable and sudden temper to base her opinions on, she braced herself for the unleashing of all Hell's fury.

Instead, Brian only smiled soothingly down at her. His open, unlined face, almost child-like in its youthful visage and granting him the appearance of a man fully ten years his junior, offered her a look of comforting warmth. "How are you holding up Melanie?"

Unprepared for the friendly words rather than the infuriated tirade she'd been expecting, it took her several moments to regain her mental balance and offer a coherent reply to his question. "Oh, uh…I'm okay Mr. McDonnell."

Her face took on a miserable, crestfallen expression, her eyes lowering until she down at the patch of dirt between them. "I'm…I'm really sorry for almost shooting Allison."

"Nonsense," Brian replied, waving off her concern in an almost identically casual manner as Allison, showing something of where she got her cheerful attitude from. "You didn't almost shoot Allison, trust me. I think you're underestimating her skills and abilities just a little bit there, Melanie. Allison _is_ a precision combat driver, after all, which means her reflexes and reaction times are phenomenal. If there had been any chance of you actually shooting her, she would have dodged out of the way."

Slightly incredulous about the claim, but unwilling to push the issue seeing as how he seemed content to forgive her, she simply shrugged noncommittally. "If you say so, sir. I still feel really bad about it though."

Both Melanie's voice and expression turned bitter with self-recrimination then, her eyes displaying a deep, burning disgust that was directed entirely inward.

"I hate this," she muttered, voice cracking slightly under the weight of the emotions building up within. "I hate not being able to do _anything_ right. It's pathetic. What's the point of an assassin who can't even shoot straight?

"All I do is screw things up and make even bigger messes for everyone else to clean up. I'm nothing but a liability to my own team-mates."

Her lips trembled slightly as tears began to cloud her vision in a misty shroud. "I'm useless."

Brian's sudden, explosive bark of indignant anger caught both girls completely off guard, Allison taking a half-step back in alarm as her handler drew himself to his full height, heavily-muscled frame straining slightly against the fabric of the navy-blue polo shirt he wore.

Caught and held by the intense glare Brian directed at her, Melanie could only stare up in wide-eyed, nervous fear as the man stepped forward, hands reaching out to grip her shoulders. His long fingers dug into her flesh with enough force to draw an involuntary wince from her. Tears suddenly forgotten, she stood frozen, feet rooted to the ground.

"Who told you that?" Brian demanded fiercely, giving her shoulders a slight, forceful shake. "Who told you that you're useless?"

Stunned by the question and still shaken by Brian's intensity, Melanie gaped soundlessly up at him, fighting to work moisture back into her mouth. "N…nobody told me that. It's just…my own opinion." Equanimity slowly returning as she talked, bitterness returned as her nervousness began to fade. "And I think it's rather obvious I'm right, isn't it?"

"Well you're not right Melanie," Brian snapped in fierce reply. "You are _not_ useless, do you understand? I don't _ever_ want to hear about you saying that about yourself."

"That's what _I_ told her," Allison muttered from where she stood a couple of feet away, positioned between the two. Slim arms folded beneath her breasts, hips canted slightly to one side, one leg bent at the knee, she offered her handler a look of long-suffering exasperation.

"Did you, now?" he asked simply, one light-brown eyebrow arched faintly.

"Yeah."

Turning his gaze back on Melanie, Brian's youthful face set into the stern, lecturing look of a father scolding a recalcitrant child caught in the act of some mischievous deed. "Well then, you listen to Allison's advice Melanie. She has a damned good head on her shoulders and she knows what she's talking about most of the time."

Beaming with pride at Brian's praise, it took Allison's brain a few moments to catch up and fully process what he'd said. "You're darn right I…what? Hey, wait a minute! What do you mean, "Most of the time?" I _always_ know what I'm talking about."

Ignoring the dark, indignant glare his cyborg was throwing him, Brian kept his gaze and attention focused on the smaller girl in front of him. "Melanie, listen to me. You need to have more faith in yourself. Just because you're a cyborg doesn't mean you're expected to be automatically perfect." He glanced away briefly, mind drawing back to his infuriating argument with Jacob and Jean only minutes ago. "No matter what some people may tell you.

"You just need to be patient. You _will_ get better. In time."

"Well how much time?" Melanie snapped, shrugging off the man's hands, stepping back, out of reach. Her bitter resentment and frustration were bubbling up once more to the fore, spilling forth as she lashed out angrily. "No offense Mr. McDonnell, and I really do appreciate your trying to cheer me up, but I'm getting sick and tired of just waiting for this magical turn-around everyone keeps saying will happen.

"You all keep telling be to be patient, to wait, that it'll happen _eventually_. Well, how long is it supposed to take for eventually to become now?"

"I don't know Melanie," Brian said, shaking his head contritely. "I'm sorry, but I don't. But maybe you should consider the possibility that you're doing this to yourself."

Frowning in confusion, slim eyebrows arched inquisitively, Melanie stared at him with open scepticism. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Have you ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophesy?" Brian asked in answer, slipping his hands back into the pocket's of his jeans.

"No, what's that?"

"It's when one person is told about something that is going to happen to them and that person gets so wrapped up trying to prevent that event from happening that they don't realize the very actions they're taking are what ultimately ends up causing the very event to happen."

Face scrunched up faintly in deep contemplation, Melanie was a while in replying to Brian's words, her voice hesitant and unsure when she finally did speak. "So…what? You think I'm somehow messing myself up during training and don't even realize it? That something _I'm_ doing to keep from failing is what's making me fail?"

Brian shrugged, not entirely sure of his thoughts himself. "I don't know, maybe. You certainly seem to have convinced yourself that you're not capable of meeting the agency's performance standards so, yes; maybe you are subconsciously sabotaging your own efforts.

"You honestly believe yourself to be unable to do the job, so something inside you keeps you from doing so in order to meet your own expectations, regardless of how hard you think you're trying."

Melanie blinked in astonishment, her mouth falling open, eyes staring, unseeing, beyond where Brian was standing. A storm of thoughts ripped through her, sudden uncertainty and a strangely blooming hope warring with her thickly grown sense of bitterness and inadequacy. Could it be true? Were her problems really as simple as that? The idea that her own doubts, both buried and openly displayed were holding her back, keeping her from succeeding almost seemed too easy to put any faith in. But…it made sense.

"Wow. I…I never thought about it like that before."

"Well, maybe you should. At the very least, it's something to consider."

"Yeah. Um…thanks Mr. McDonnell."

"It's not a problem Melanie."

A faintly damp chill breeze rolled across the training grounds, ruffling Brian's rather short-cropped, slightly spiked light brown hair. Frowning irritatedly, Melanie raked her own strawberry-blonde tresses back out of her eyes, hooking a thick lock behind each ear.

The sound of Allison fidgeting at his side drew Brian's attention back to his partner, who threw him a slightly impatient look, reminding him that they all had places they needed to be and that he'd carried on long enough.

"Now then, Allison and I need to get going. If I remember correctly, you girls have classes the rest of the morning, don't you?"

Allison immediately chirped up, eager for the chance to contribute in what had for the most part been a one-sided conversation, the exuberant brunette having felt slightly left out.

"Yep. First history with Michele and then math with Priscilla."

"Okay then. I guess Allison will see you later then, Melanie."

"Yeah, see you in a bit Melanie. I'll save you a seat, okay?"

Melanie blushed faintly at the pair's almost too enthusiastic efforts at kindness. Despite the obviousness of their efforts to leave her happy and cheered, she still felt warmed by the fact that they both cared enough to do so in the first place.

She offered her friend a thin, weak smile, nodding in acceptance "Okay, thanks Allison."

* * *

Allison walked in silence beside her handler for several minutes, feelings of proud affection towards the man glowing with radiant warmth throughout her entire body. She had honestly been as surprised as Melanie when Brian had started in on her not in chastisement and recrimination, but in support and encouragement.

Twisting her head slightly to the side to peer up at Brian from the corner of one eye, Allison surreptitiously slid herself up closer beside him. Slowly she snaked out her arms, slipping them around his elbow. She hugged herself tight to Brian's arm as he flicked a glance down at her curiously.

"I am _so_ proud of you Brian. That was really nice what you did for her. She _really_ needed that boost to her morale."

"You sound surprised," Brian nodded, amused by the notion of his cyborg partner being the one to praise the performance of her handler. "What were you expecting me to do, bite her head off?"

Pulling back slightly but still keeping her arms clutched tightly around Brian's left arm, Allison sniffed lightly with derisive incredulity. "I don't know. I mean, she _did_ almost shoot me."

"It's not my place to chastise her," he replied, shrugging indifferently. "That's her handler's job. Do I look like her handler?"

Shaking her head, Allison chuckled softly, her voice a light, bubbling chime. "Obviously not. But still, I…"

"Then it's none of my business."

Sighing, Allison let her head fall back, staring up at the growing cloud cover rolling in from the west. The air was beginning to grow heavy with the scent of approaching rain. "I guess you got a point. Not that it really matters though, seeing as how, once Jacob gets his hands on her, he's probably going to yell at her enough for the both of you put together. And then some."

Feeling his good mood suddenly darken at Allison's mentioning of the man, Brian scowled to himself. "Yeah well, there is that."

The pair fell once more into a somewhat uneasy silence then, both feeling the need to be alone with their respective thoughts.

The quiet pall lasted only until they drew up next to Brian's red Audi. The sleek, ten-cylinder, twin turbo-charged sedan gleamed in the mid-morning light, despite the thickening cloud-cover. Instantly Allison seemed to come alive once again, pulling away from him to bounce up and down excitedly.

"Oh, Brian, can I drive? Can I, can I, can I? Please, please, please, please, please, please, please…?"

"Allison!"

"Hey, I almost got shot! In the face! Considering that fact, I think I maintained a quite admirable level of calm composure."

"So?" Brian growled, knowing where she was going with this but still compelled out of some hidden streak of masochistic desire to ask anyway."

"So, I think I'm entitled to a bit of a reward, don't you?" She flashed him a beaming, toothy grin, her blue eyes sparkling expectantly. Her whole body bobbed with tightly-wound exhilaration.

Sighing to himself, Brian rubbed one hand down his face, mostly to hide the grin that was breaking free of his control.

"Alright, fine." He'd barely finished with the first word when Allison let out an excited squeal of delight, darting forward with hands outstretched, fingers wiggling impatiently for him to deposit the keys in her cupped palms.

Digging the Audi's keys out of his pocket, he held them out of her, snatching them back just as she began to grab for them. Panic flared in her eyes, mouth falling open in horror. She stared up at him, eyes bulging slightly.

"But keep it under sixty, okay?"

Eyes pulling back into her head, Allison closed her mouth with a faint _click_ of teeth. Her lips immediately curled into a sly, mischievous smile. "Metric or Imperial?"

"Sixty _kilometres_," Allison," Brian growled in mild, genuine irritation.

"What? Sixty kilometres per hour?" Allison exclaimed, face once again taking on a shocked, slightly horrified expression. "Oh come on Brian, that's not even worth it. Why even let me drive at all of you're going to be like that?"

"Well if that's the way you feel about it," Brian replied dismissively, stepping around her to come up next to the driver's door.

"Hey, that's not fair!"

"You said you'd rather not drive, Allison." Perhaps it was wrong of him to tease her in such a manner, but Brian was enjoying himself far too much to overly care. It was rare enough for him to get the chance to give Allison's nose an often well-deserved tweak.

"Oh yeah? Well need I remind you Brian, that I can hot-wire pretty much anything with four wheels? Including _this_ car?"

Twisting around suddenly at the implied threat of the statement, Brian met Allison's flat look of slightly arrogant superiority, her eyebrows arched sharply.

"You wouldn't dare."

"Oh you know I would. In a heartbeat."

Brian fumed as the feelings of smug satisfaction evaporated, leaving behind a bitter sense of disbelief.

Their eyes locked, Brian finally relented with a strangled growl deep in the back of his throat. "Fine, eighty kilometres."

Allison's hand snapped out with blinding speed as he began to proffer the keys, unwilling to chance a repeat performance and have him change his mind. When Brian failed to release the keys, she flicked her eyes back up to meet his stern, level gaze.

"But no drifting."

For a long, drawn out minute, Allison seriously considered the implications of the limitation, honestly wondering if it was worth it. Weighing her options, she finally made up her mind and nodded sharply.

"Deal."

Seconds later she was slipping behind the wheel, body flowing like water to mould itself into the soft contours of the leather, racing styled bucket seat, seatbelt tightened firmly across her torso. Sliding the key into the ignition with gentle, delicate care, Allison gave it a smooth, firm twist and felt the engine roar to life. A surge of sheer primal thrill rippled through her as the deep, rumbling vibrations coursed through her.

Left foot pressing down on the brake, she stepped down on the accelerator with her right in a single smooth motion, the engine roaring in response. The needle of the tachometer snapped around to dance just on the edge of its 6200 RPM redline threshold before slowly settling back down.

Allison's broad, ecstatic grin split her face from ear to ear and she couldn't resist tromping hard on the accelerator several times in quick succession, the growling roar of V-ten monster under the hood revving up in reply eliciting a delighted giggle from the girl who was both affectionately and aptly known as the agency's "Petrol-head Princess."

The vehicle shifted and rocked slightly as Brian slid into the passenger seat beside her, quickly clicking his seatbelt in place and tugging it snug across his lap and chest.

"Please try to behave yourself Allison. We're only going across the compound. And remember what I said."

"No drifting and nothing above eighty, gotcha," she quipped cheerfully.

Throwing the car's electronically assisted clutch-less manual transmission into reverse, Allison swung her upper body around to peer out the back window. Without any warning, she slammed the accelerator to the floor, the engine roaring like some demonic beast unleashed from the fires of Hell itself. All four wheels spun madly in the tightly packed gravel parking lot; stone chips, pebbles and dirt flying as the vehicle fought for traction.

With a spine-loosening lurch, the Audi flew backwards, picking up speed with terrifying quickness.

Allison held the accelerator down for several seconds as their momentum increased, eyes still glued out the back window to watch for any obstructions in her path. Then, right hand on the gear-shift, she pulled her foot clear off of the gas-pedal, snapped the transmission into neutral and yanked the steering wheel hard to the right.

The car's front end spun around sharply, the engine's roar and the crunch of gravel drowning out all other noise. Quickly, Allison began to counter-steer as the nose came around to what only a moment ago had been the back, straightening the wheels out and slamming the transmission into forward-drive.

Foot bearing down hard on the accelerator, the vehicle rocketed out of the parking lot at close to Brian's eighty kilometres per hour limit.

"Allison," Brian growled menacingly, his face slightly pale and waxen, a slight sheen of sweat glistening on her cheeks and brow.

Flicking a quick glance over at her handler, seeing his faintly nauseous expression, Allison could help but offer a light-hearted teasing. "What? You said nothing about reverse J-turns Brian."

"I'll remember that for the future." Allison only laughed in reply, grip tightening on the steering wheel as she sailed down the road towards the agency's main building.

* * *

Jacob turned to watch as the red sedan ripped out of the parking lot, engine screaming. He shook his head sadly, frowning to himself in thought. Brian had to have a death wish to let Allison behind the wheel of his own car.

Continuing on, he slowly made his way across the parking lot until he reached the assault course. He spotted Melanie seated at one of several wooden picnic tables set up an appropriate distance from the head-high perimeter wall separating the live-fire training zones from the rest of the agency grounds. As he neared, he could see that she'd taken to dismantling her German-made USP forty-five handgun and was diligently wiping down and cleaning each piece. One of the very small consolations, Jacob had to admit, was that while she might not be able to actually use the damn thing with any degree of accuracy, Melanie was certainly dutiful in taking care of her weapons.

When she finally noticed him approaching, Melanie slowly rose, wiping her hands clean on a small rag and faced Jacob with as much calm as she could muster.

When Jacob finally came to a stop in front of her, he stood staring down at her for several minutes before speaking. When he did, he voice was flat and cold, only faintly tinged around the edges with traces of derisive scorn. "I suppose I could be angry or disappointed by your poor performance, but frankly, I don't think either one of us is particularly surprised by it."

"No sir," Melanie replied softly, averting her gaze.

Glancing out across the agency grounds, one hand idly scratching at the back of his head, Jacob went on in addressing her. "I don't suppose you have a good explanation for your performance, do you?"

"Not really."

He frowned at the sound of her snide, bitter tone, turning back to cast a disapproving glare down at her. She stood motionless before him; head still turned aside, hands fisted tightly at her sides.

Irritation coursed through him in rising waves, his lips slowly peeling back in a fierce rictus snarl. Coming down from the observation tower, Jacob had been determined to keep a firm hold on his anger and frustration. He'd gone into the training exercise knowing that Melanie would fail it, as she had failed every previous one before. So why was it so hard for him to stay calm? He expected next to nothing from her, yet still she managed to upset him when as she was doing was meeting his own low expectations.

Finally Jacob's anger boiled over and with a sharp, vehement curse, he lashed out. "God damn it, Melanie! I know you're not an idiot; I've looked over your regular school course-work and you do just fine keeping up with all of the other girls, so you're not some kind of a retard."

Melanie flinched visibly at his harsh, barking tone. Drawing her arms protectively around herself, she huddled inward as shame burned hot and venomous through her veins.

Gesturing wildly with his hands for added emphasis, Jacob went on with his explosive tirade. "Do you just not care or something? Are you simply ignoring everything that I tell you during practise?"

"No!" Melanie exclaimed suddenly, her head snapping up, watery eyes wide with panic at Jacob's accusation. "Jacob, I swear I listen to what you teach me and I remember all of it, I do!"

"Then what the hell is wrong with you?"

"I don't know," she cried, sudden desperation blending with her shame, anger, bitterness and self-loathing in a lethal cocktail of emotional strain that had her rapidly sliding downhill towards a full breakdown. "I do everything that you tell me to do when I'm shooting but, somehow, I _still_ mess up." Tears began spilling down her softly rounded cheeks, making wet trails through the dirt and powdery residue coating her skin.

"I don't know Jacob. Mr. McDonnell thinks maybe that I'm sabotaging myself without knowing it."

"What are you talking about?" Jacob asked, his anger stalling at the unexpected response. So the man had taken it upon himself to interfere on Melanie's behalf, had he? Well, if it actually resulted in an improvement in her performance, Jacob felt that he might just be willing to let it slide, as opposed to the overwhelming urge to smash the man's face in that was building within him.

"Well, he said that maybe I've convinced myself that I can't perform to the agency's standards, to the point where I actually _can't_ perform to their standards."

"So it could just be all in your head, huh?"

"Yeah."

Instinctively Jacob's first reaction was to scoff at the idea. He'd never put much stock on the whole school of psychiatric head-shrinkery that some insisted upon. In his mind, any emotional problems a person had to work out were best done in the company of a few trusted friends and an equal number of trusted bottles of booze. But if it was really something that simple, just a pure lack of confidence on her part…

"Hmm…I guess that could make sense. It's as good an explanation as any, at least. You think that's the problem, then?"

"I'm not sure," she said, shrugging simply. "Maybe I'm just defective."

"Defective?"

"Yeah, you know, like maybe Dr. Bianchi and his team screwed something up when building me."

Snorting scornfully at the idea, Jacob shook his head in response, running one hand back through his hair. "I highly doubt that Melanie. You're not exactly the first cyborg that they've built. I think Bianchi and his people know what they are doing."

Slightly dejected, but having recognized the ridiculousness of the notion before she'd even offered it, Melanie nodded faintly. "I guess you're right."

The conversation dropped off sharply at that point, both standing around in the rapidly deepening gloom, the cloud cover now grown to a thick blanket of heavy, swollen thunderheads. The expected rain had turned into a storm that would likely break within the hour.

Both cyborg and handler spent several long, protracted and distinctly uncomfortable minutes lost in their own thoughts, each beginning to fidget before Jacob finally broke the silence.

"Well then, I can't see there being anything left to discuss. You have history and math classes next, don't you?"

Melanie replied quickly, eager for the chance to escape what had become an exercise in abject misery for her. "Yes sir."

Loping back to the picnic table to gather up the pieces of her still disassembled pistol, depositing them carefully into a multi-compartment handbag that she carried expressly for the purpose. She then made her way out to the parking lot, to where Jacob's custom rebuilt seventy-two Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme sat. Its deep blue metallic finish paintjob seemed to glow in defiance of the dwindling light. The crisp white wide-body racing stripes running up the length of the hood, following its moulded contours perfectly, were matched by the white hardtop roof and white accent stripe running along either side of the chassis.

Though she'd yet to learn the details behind the car, Melanie was aware that Jacob had sent for the car to be shipped over from his native Canada and had almost immediately sent it in to the agency's technological development department; a team of high-strung, heavily caffeinated borderline lunatics most referred to as the "Q-branch," after some old movies that she'd never heard of.

In addition to having the entire engine torn apart, upgraded, modified and put back together, the two-door muscle car's entire chassis had been heavily reinforced with the same type of carbon-weave reinforced metal plating that had been used in the first generation cyborgs, albeit on a significantly larger scale. The windows had all been replaced with laminated, bullet-resistant ballistic glass capable of standing up to several direct hits by standard assault rifle rounds.

When she realized that no accompanying footsteps followed behind her, Melanie stopped and, puzzled, turned back around to find Jacob still standing where she had left him, peering at her with an odd, expectant expression.

Walking back over to him, Melanie gazed at him, head slightly canted to one side inquisitively. "Jacob, aren't you coming?"

"No; I need to spend some time on the ranges myself or I'll end up as bad of a shot as you are," he replied with a gentle shake of his head, only half-joking in his final comment.

"Well you still need to drive me back to the main building."

A faint grin twisted up one side of his mouth and again Jacob gave her a gentle shake of his head in denial. "No, I don't. You're walking back."

Shocked and confused, Melanie stood dumbfounded for a time, unable to completely grasp what he was telling her. "What? But my classes start in like, fifteen minutes. How am I supposed to get back in time?"

"I recommend running," Jacob replied flippantly, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his cargo pants. "Consider this your punishment for failing your training exercise."

"But that's not fair!" Melanie exclaimed, face creased in panicked distress. "It's too far to run and I still need to shower and change, not to mention I haven't finished cleaning my forty-five and…"

"Stop whining," Jacob barked fiercely, his momentary amusement drowned out by mounting annoyance. "It's not that far of a run and besides, you're a combat cyborg for Christ's sake. Now don't just stand here bitching and moaning about what isn't going to change and get going, or else you really _will_ be late."

Crestfallen and miserable, all of the previous good-mood she'd harboured after talking with Brian crushed and smothered away and with tears slowly coursing down her face once more, Melanie choked back a whimpering sob. With fierce, brutal determination, she managed to nod stiffly, rasping out a weak "yes sir," before spinning on her heel and starting back towards the agency's main compound.

As she picked up her pace, lengthening her stride until she was flowing across the ground at a smooth, distance-devouring rhythm of motion, fighting against the tears that leaked from the corners of her eyes, a distant rumbling peal of thunder drifted across the land.

* * *

Lucretia turned slightly in her seat at the sound of the double-doors opening, letting out a deep, relieved sigh as the younger strawberry-blonde girl poked her head into the auditorium-styled classroom, glancing around nervously before slipping inside and shutting the door softly behind her.

Standing at the head of the classroom behind a double-wide podium that was perched atop a broad raised dais, Michele Pagani smiled warmly at the girl, briefly casting a glancing look at the eighteen-carat rose gold face of his limited edition Bugatti Faubourg watch.

"Excellent timing Melanie," Michele exclaimed with a quick, hearty chuckle. "Less than a minute to spare. Why don't you go take a seat?"

Jabbing the taller brunette at her side, who was bent over her omnipresent notebook, pencil scribbling madly and incessantly as she struggled to work out the details of whatever latest project she was working on.

Lucretia bobbed her head towards the doors, indicating the new arrival. She smiled thinly as a mirrored sigh of relief slipped from Allison and she rose smoothly, waving one hand above her head, calling out loudly, drawing the attention of the other girls scattered throughout the room. "Hey Melanie, over here!"

Lucretia's roommate cringed at the sudden attention directed her way from her fellow cyborgs and, tightening her grip on her satchel-style schoolbag, hurried up the tiered rows of seats to where she and Allison waited.

"There you are," Allison exclaimed lightly, grinning as Melanie slumped down into the seat next to Lucretia. "Jacob must have really let you have it if you just got back now." The girl's recent arrival back at the main compound was evidenced by the fact that her red-gold hair still hung limply in glistening strands, her pale skin still damp from her shower.

Her pale blue eyes narrowing, Lucretia studied her friends and roommate as she let her bag slide off of her shoulder onto the floor, before proceeding to fold her arms on the desktop in front of her and bury her face in them.

"Okay girls," Mr. Pagani began, taking up the slim remote control to the overhead projector and turning it on. Images of a medieval European landscape ranging across the lower Northern foothills of the Alps bloomed on the large, room-spanning white board at Michele's back. "Text-books to page seventy-three. I believe we were just getting into the migratory propagation of the Huns into central Europe. Now then…"

Flicking a worried look over at Allison, who returned it with a concerned expression of her own, both girls focused their attention on Melanie, who was softly moaning into her arms.

"You okay Mel?" Lucretia asked softly, settling one slim-fingered hand on the middle of Melanie's hunched back.

"Not really," she replied, her voice muffled by her arms. "I feel like I'm going to throw up."

"Ouch," Allison whispered, wincing slightly. "That bad huh?"

"No, not his lecture," she replied, lifting her head enough to twist it to the side and look over at Allison through bleary eyes. "That went okay, I guess. Jacob made me walk back."

Lucretia felt her jaw drop at that, appalled that Melanie's handler would inflict that on her, knowing full well that maintaining good academic standings was a part of their expected training. "He made you walk all the way back from the training grounds?"

"Yeah, said it was my punishment for flunking the assault exercise. God, I am so sick of this."

Lucretia felt horrible for her friend. Even more so for the fact that, from what Allison had told her, Melanie had seemed genuinely happy for the first time in days when Allison and Brian had left earlier. Now, all of Melanie's good mood seemed to have been cruelly gouged and cut out of her.

"Wow Melanie, that's harsh. He _did_ know that there was only twenty minutes left when Brian and I left, right?"

"Of course he knew, Allison," Melanie retorted in a sharp hiss. "You think he cared? That was the point. It wouldn't have been a punishment if I could have just casually _skipped_ my way back, now would it?"

"You got me there, I'm afraid," Allison sighed, her eternal exuberance subdued by her friend's obvious misery.

Lucretia shook her head, exasperated amazement rising within. "Geeze Melanie, I don't know how you do it."

"Do what?" she asked, angling her head downward to look now upon her roommate.

"Put up with Jacob, that's what. If Enzo put me through _half_ the crap that Jacob puts you through, I think I would have either revolted, or more likely simply keeled over dead, weeks ago."

"It's not that bad," Melanie said defensively, the burning flash in her amber eyes proof of her conditioning clamping down on her mind at the perceived attack on her handler. "He didn't really yell at me any more than what I was expecting and I'm just tired from having had to sprint almost the whole way, is all."

Allison opened her mouth to reply, but whatever she had been intending to say was interrupted by Michele suddenly clearing his throat loudly, swinging all three girls' attention to the front of the room.

"My apologies for interrupting your conversation girls, as I'm sure it's of the utmost importance towards the continuing safety and security of both Italia and all of her peoples, but if you could, I would love to have just a few minutes of your time." Delivered with Michele's customary touch of light-hearted humour, the gentle rebuke came off as being almost playfully teasing, as opposed to mocking or scornful.

"Sorry, Mr. Pagani," Allison called out cheerfully, standing up to speak for herself and both of her friends.

Michele found himself smiling and chuckling at the girl's bubbly, sweet-faced innocence. "That's quite all right, Allison. But see what you can do about keeping your little sisters in line please?"

"Sure thing Mr. Pagani," she replied with a chuckling giggle of her own.

"Thank you Allison. And seeing as how you're already standing, perhaps you could do us the pleasure of giving us your thoughts on the treatise agreement forged between Emperor Theodosius of the Eastern Roman Empire and the invading Huns."

Without missing a beat, Allison flipped through the pages of her text-book until she found the relevant section before immediately launching into a length expose on what she believed to have been the pros and cons to the ancient emperor's submitting to the invading barbarian horde.

Lucretia only half-listened to what was being said, distracted as she was my Melanie's morose expression and near-vacant eyes.

Leaning in towards the other girl, Lucretia brushed her elbow along Melanie's upper arm to get her attention. "Hey, did you try using you're sniper-mode like we talked about?"

Straightening in her seat somewhat, Melanie wiped at her eyes to scrub away the tears before answering. "At first, yeah, for a little bit."

"And?" Lucretia pressed gently.

"And it _does _help my accuracy, but I just end up shooting at a ridiculously slow pace."

"That's gotta be better than nothing though, right?" she offered encouragingly.

Melanie rolled her eyes, shifting her position around to slouch low in her seat, arms folded across her chest. "Sure, except for the part where almost my entire nervous system shuts down to prevent minute involuntary muscle contractions from throwing off my trajectories, leaving my completely paralyzed from the chest, down."

Lucretia blinked dumbly, left drawing a blank on how to properly respond to that statement. After several moments, all she managed to work out was a weak "oh," that sounded horribly inadequate.

Her attention wandered back to the ongoing lesson, Mr. Pagani now continuing with Allison finished her impromptu speech and having sat back down. The rest of the nearly hour long class passed by with a mundane quite that was spared lapsing into mind-numbing boredom thanks to the grace of Michele's own stylistic flare for teaching that made his lectures and discussions genuinely interesting to listen to and participate in.

"So what were you two talking about earlier?" Allison asked finally, once history class had ended and Mr. Pagani was packing up his things to depart the room. There was a five minute break scheduled before Priscilla would arrive to begin their math lessons and several of the gathered girls were taking advantage to the time to mingle and gossip, some slipping away to the cafeteria for a quick snack.

"Lucy was just asking how her idea for me to use my sniper mode during our training went," Melanie answered simply. Lucretia noted that some of Melanie's misery had faded over the course of the class, which she was thankful for.

"Was that during the second room complex?"

Melanie nodded, doodling erratic squiggles in one corner of a piece of paper. "Yeah, where I took almost ten minutes to clear six rooms."

Allison bobbed her head slowly, sighing softly in revelation. "I thought something was weird with the way you were acting then. You're accuracy was pretty much bang-on though."

"Sure, but I can barely move while in sniper mode and it takes a good thirty to forty-five seconds to switch both in and then out each time. Not the most useful when you have to move and react fast to potential ambushes and surprises."

"Maybe not," Allison said, rubbing at her chin thoughtfully, a strange gleam in her eye that spoke of a new idea beginning to take form within her mind. "But maybe something we can work on."

"What do you have in mind?" Lucretia asked, glancing over at her friend inquisitively.

"Well, maybe Melanie can train herself to slip into some kind of, I don't know, quasi- sniper mode."

"Quasi-sniper mode?" Melanie exclaimed, one eyebrow arched, face scrunched up in an expression of extreme scepticism.

Undaunted by Melanie's disbelief, Allison pressed on with the idea. "Yeah, a half-and-half setting. You activate your sniper mode just deep enough to start gaining the benefit of the increased concentration in order to improve your accuracy, but not enough to trigger the shutdown of your nervous system.

"It may not allow you to be as accurate as you are when sniping, but if you're doing room clearing and assault work, you don't need to be. Like you said, it's more about moving fast and reacting to changing situations over precision marksmanship."

"I don't know," Melanie said doubtfully, not convinced of the validity of such an idea. "I'm not sure if it works that way."

"It's worth a try though, right?"

Melanie frowned in thought, carefully considering the idea, before finally shrugging and agreeing. "Yeah, I guess. It's not like anything else has been helping so far."

"There's the spirit!" Allison chirped brightly. "We'll have you busting Padania heads in no time Melanie."

With Melanie seeming noticeably cheered, the next hour of Priscilla's math class passed quickly; Lucretia and Allison both feeling rather pleased with themselves. Not even Priscilla's aggressive, dictatorial style of teaching could dispel their buoyed moods. Lucretia smiled to herself. Things were starting to look up.

* * *

Melanie groaned wearily, rubbing at her temples in a vain attempt to sooth the dull ache throbbing just beneath the surface. All around her, fellow cyborgs filed out of the lecture hall, math class having just let out for lunch.

"What's wrong Melanie?" Allison asked, striding through the hallway to her left, Lucretia taking up position on her right.

"My brain hurts," Melanie muttered, eliciting a chuckle from both girls.

"You'll get used to it," her room-mate Lucy assured her. "It usually takes everyone a while to come to grips with Priscilla's split-personality."

Allison piped up cheerfully, adopting a tome of mock jealousy. "Yeah and at least you have the advantage of already actually understanding most of the more complex stuff."

Melanie shrugged offhandedly, enjoying the chance to finally feel somewhat superior compared to her friends for a change. "Well I _am_ a sniper, after all. Calculating firing positions and adjusting for environmental variables is part of my conditioning."

"So does that mean you'll let us copy off your notes when we start the advanced trigonometry unit?" Allison asked hopefully.

Melanie shot her a sly grin, feeling a mischievous giggle welling up within her. "Maybe. If you're nice to me."

"What do you mean, _if_ I'm nice to you?" Allison exclaimed, putting on an exaggerated show of indignant outrage. "And just who was it that stuck up for you earlier, huh?"

"Your handler Brian," Melanie replied smoothly, smiling in smug satisfaction. "You just stood there looking all dirty and dishevelled."

Lucy burst out laughing doubling over with one arm wrapped tightly around her ribs, wiping tears from her eyes with her other hand. Allison had stopped in her tracks, mouth hanging agape, eyes bulging slightly in disbelief.

Allison had to struggle several times before she finally managed to find her voice. "Well, if _this_ is how you're going to act when you're happy, remind me to never cheer you up again." She promptly fell into helpless giggles, robbing her words of any serious bite.

"Look out Allison, our little Melanie has a backbone after all," Lucretia added, after she'd managed to calm down enough to draw a steadying breath.

"Yeah well, had I known the little turn-coat was going to start attacking me, I'd never have bothered help her find it.

"And just for that smart-assed comment Melanie, _you_ can be the one to grab us our lunches."

"No way, with the way you eat, I'll be spending the whole lunch-period just running back and forth with trays," Melanie snipped teasingly, immediately ducking swiftly and spinning out of the way as Allison swiped at her. Again Lucretia had to pause as she was overcome with laughter.

"You little _bitch_!" Allison exclaimed, laughing. "See if I ever help _you_ again."

"It would appear, Allison, that you've created a monster," Lucretia said with mock seriousness, taking on an informative, lecturing tone.

"Well how come she isn't going for _your_ throat?" Allison growled, slightly put out that she was the only one being attacked by Melanie's seemingly new-found barbed tongue.

"Diplomatic immunity," Lucretia replied simply. "I'm her room-mate."

"Yeah, are you nuts? I have to live with her. And she's a hacker. God only knows what kind of pranks she could pull if she went digging into the agency's computer systems."

"Fine, fine, but pick on someone else, will ya?" Allison begged, hands pressed together and held out in front of her pleadingly. "If you keep this up, I'm going to end up bleeding to death."

Melanie pressed one finger to the underside of her bottom lip, eyes narrowed in thought as she carefully considered her friend's request. "Well, okay. I suppose since you asked so nicely, I can go easy on you. For now."

"Gee, how considerate of you," Allison replied dryly, glaring at the younger, shorter girl, who only laughed blithely in response. "Good Lord, I really _have_ created a monster. I shudder to think of what will happen once we finally unleash you on the Padanians."

Lucretia draped one arm around Melanie's shoulders, settling her weight down on the other girl until she staggered slightly under the weight. "Yeah Melanie, try to save some of it for the terrorists we're supposed to be fighting."

"I'll see what I can do," she retorted, adjusting her bearing to compensate for Lucretia, who was veritably hanging off of her.

"Oh God, what _have _I gotten us all into?" Allison asked, face lifted up imploringly to the heavens.

Most of the next two hours passed uneventfully, as the trio of friends chatted and ate, Melanie picking delicately as her _Vitello Parmigiana__, _the tender veal cutlet virtually falling apart as she speared each piece with her fork. Lucretia and Allison, seated next to and across from her respectively, had burned through their chicken and seafood salad appetisers, as well as their pasta dish entrees and were looking to break speed dining records as their tore into the second course.

All around them was a quiet, muted buzz of conversation as various other small clusters of girls and agency staff sat chatting over their own meals. The tones of most conversations was naturally subdued in most cases; a mood that seemed to match the bleak weather. It had begun to rain during history class and by this point the precipitation had increased in strength to the point of a full-blown thunderstorm.

The heavy drapes had been drawn shut over the full-length window and every so often were lit from outside by a flash of lightning. Invariably, within a handful of seconds, each flash would be followed by a slow rumble of thunder as it rolled across the landscape. There were the odd few who instead celebrated the foul weather, as it would likely mean the cancellation of any scheduled outdoor physical training.

Lucretia paused long enough to take a long, slow sip of her white wine, rolling the dry liquid around in her mouth, savouring the light-bodied flavour before swallowing, giving a soft sigh of appreciation.

By comparison, Allison was already on her second sup of coffee, the first of which she had gulped down in less than twenty seconds. She was, however taking her time with the second cup, explaining when Melanie asked about it that the first was merely a quick-shot to level her out and refuel, whereas the second was more for actual enjoyment.

Almost as if in an effort to make up for her light, sparing eating habits, Melanie had gone through four glasses of sport's drink so far and was just swallowing the last mouthful of her fifth when Allison perked up, her eyes flicking past her shoulder at someone approaching from behind.

"Well, well, well. Look who finally decided to crawl out of her hole," Allison said jokingly. "Good-afternoon sleepy-head. You just waking up now?"

Twisting around in her seat to look over her shoulder, Melanie saw a tall, slim girl Allison's age stride up and plunk herself down in the seat next to her.

Dressed in bright purple silk pyjamas, her glistening black hair falling in a mussed up, tangled mess to just below her shoulder blades, Michele Pagani's cyborg partner Kara glared icy-cold death across the table at Allison, her slightly slanted, almond-shaped dark eyes narrowed into slits.

"Shut up and bring me coffee," she hissed, her soft melodic voice cracking with the lingering effects of sleep still clinging to her throat.

"Someone's certainly cranky today," Allison went on, still jabbing at the other girl teasingly. She then relented, sliding her cup across the table to Kara. "Here, I've hardly had any out of this one."

Kara immediately wrapped both slim-fingered hands tightly about the glazed ceramic mug, the almost scalding heat of the coffee seeping into her palms and drawing a moaning sigh of satisfaction from the girl.

"Thanks," Kara croaked, after taking a tentative sip. "And yes, I just woke up. Michele and I didn't get in until four this morning and I had to drive the last hour of the way."

Allison nodded in understanding, speaking between bites of veal. "That explains why you weren't in class. Or at morning training."

"Yeah. I was exhausted by the time we got back. I barely managed to stay awake long enough to take a shower and get changed. Michele let me take the whole morning off to sleep.

"By the way, that reminds me: how'd your run of the assault course go Melanie?"

Melanie scowled as the unpleasant memory was suddenly dredged up. She took out her returning bitterness on her food, spearing a chunk of veal with her fork with enough force to bend the tines and chip the plate.

"About as well as everyone expected."

"That bad huh? Well, don't worry about it Melanie, you'll…"

"Get better eventually," Melanie interrupted sourly, knowing instantly what Kara was going to say. "Yeah, I know. So _everyone_ keeps telling me."

Worried glances passed silently between her three friends, Kara looking slightly confused for her part.

Feeling her mood beginning to drop once again, Melanie rose suddenly, picking up her tray of almost untouched food and began to head to the serving counter. "Excuse me, I'm not feeling all that hungry." She heard the three girls whispering back and forth fiercely as she strode away, Kara confusedly wondering what she had done wrong.

Depositing her tray on the return counter, she ignored the disapproving looks from the cooks and serving staff as they took in her lightly picked-at fettuccini primavera, half-eaten cutlet and virtually untouched salad. She then made her way over to the beverage counter and poured herself another glass of sports drink.

Sipping steadily at her drink, Melanie slowly made her way back over to the table and her friends, warring against the depressed fugue Kara's thoughtless, if undeniably well-intentioned, words had cast over her. Lost in thought as she was, Melanie didn't notice the other, fellow cyborg approaching from across the serving line.

A sharply hissing, venomous snarl made Melanie aware of the other's presence and she stopped short, head flashing towards the voice as she hurriedly backpedalled several steps. Less than two feet away, her green eyes glaring at Melanie with indignant loathing and contemptuous disgust, Nina stood with feet planted shoulder-width apart, her tray of food held up high, out of the way.

"Watch where you're going, you brainless little retard," Nina snapped viciously. Several other girls nearby who heard the hot, acerbic tone in her voice quickly chose to make themselves scarce, moving off in other directions to avoid the confrontation.

"I swear to God, you really _are_ completely incompetent, aren't you? Are you a total moron, or just plain blind? Because either way, it certainly explains why you're so useless in everything you do."

Melanie fumed silently at Nina's words, jaw muscles working tightly beneath the skin as she fought to maintain control and composure. "I'm sorry Nina. I didn't see you."

"Obviously not," Nina observed dryly, lip curled back in a sneer. "It's no wonder Chief Lorenzo is thinking about tossing you on the scrap heap. Total failure that you are, everyone is just sick and tired of wasting their time and money."

Melanie hadn't really been listening to Nina's tirade, knowing from previous and thankfully brief run-ins with the girl what she was like. But the last comment she made caught Melanie's attention and she frowned in shocked confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, you haven't heard?" Nina exclaimed, anger shifting almost instantly to smug self-satisfaction. Her full, cupid's-bow lips curled into a sly grin, eyes glittering with malicious glee. "There's talk floating around amongst the handlers and agency staff of you being decommissioned and dismantled. Can't have useless and defective cyborgs draining the agency's resources, now can we? Why, there's even a betting pool starting up to see just when Lorenzo will decide to pull your plug."

"That…that's a lie. You're just being a bitch Nina, trying to get under my skin," Melanie asserted with far less strength and conviction than she would have liked.

"Oh please, you actually think I'd bother going out of my way to make up stories just to antagonize _you_? Like I have nothing better to do with my time?

"Incidentally, I heard you shot Allison during training, good job Reject; you _are_ aware that it's the bad guys you're supposed to aim at, right? Although, to be fair, with your aim you probably _were_ aiming at them."

"I didn't shoot Allison," Melanie growled, feeling her anger burning through her veins.

"Oh? So I suppose we all just imagined that bloody gash running across her face then, huh?"

Humiliation seared through Melanie in a crushing wave, her face burning a bright red to rival the highlights in her hair. "I…I didn't…shoot her. It…it was a piece of…of shrapnel."

"Oh yes, that was it! A shard of cement torn from the wall beside her. Of course, how silly of me. Yes, I do so hate it when the walls start attacking _me_ during my training runs. So terribly inconvenient."

"Very funny, Nina."

"So you _almost_ shot her, instead of actually shooting her. Not much difference, as far as I'm concerned; as far as Jean and Lorenzo are concerned, too, I'd say." Feeling profoundly proud of herself, Nina trounced away then, small, slightly-upturned nose held high in the air like some noble-born aristocrat.

Still seething inside, Melanie was just beginning to resume her walk back to her table when she saw Nina stop and turn back out of the corner of her eye. "Oh, one more thing, Reject: I would certainly appreciate it if you could at the very least hold out until next Thursday before getting yourself scrapped."

Sensing a tingle of dread shoot up her spine, but unable to resist the sudden impulse, Melanie turned back to face Nina, amber eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Why? What's on next Thursday?"

"Why, that's my date in the betting pool, or course. I've got fifty Euros riding on you being scrapped on Thursday of next week. So please try to hold on till then, okay?" She left Melanie standing in the middle of the floor, wavy black hair bouncing at every step, knee-length pleated skirt swirling about her long, lean legs.

Tears burned in Melanie's eyes, the heat of humiliated shame suffusing her face. Her temples throbbed painfully and she had to grit her teeth tightly against the building agony. Sharp needling prickles ran up Melanie's arms and legs and her whole body trembled slightly as rage swept through her. Hands clenched tightly, her glass of sports drink shattered, unheeded, spilling fluid all over her hand and the floor under her.

Before she knew what was happening, Melanie felt herself moving forward, blinded by her anger. Running shoes squeaking on the immaculately cleaned and waxed tile floor, she strode forward purposefully.

Nina turned around at the sound of footsteps hurrying from behind her, more than slightly surprised to see Melanie only a few steps away, her blazing with open hatred and loathing. Before she even had time to open her mouth to deliver a sharp retort, Melanie surged forward, hands snapping forward with a blur of motion. Connecting solidly with Nina's chest, the force of the impact hurled the older, taller girl from her feet, Nina yelping in alarm as she pitched backwards, toppling to the floor with a resounding _crash_ as her aluminum tray, laden with food, clattered to the floor beside her, spilling food all down her front and side.

"Fuck you, you stuck up_ bitch_!" Melanie shouted furiously, stabbing one accusatory finger down at the shocked, slightly horrified girl splayed out on the ground before her. All sound in the cafeteria sliced off at the moment of impact, every pair of eyes turned and locked on the pair. "Who the hell do you think you are, talking to me like that? I don't care what you, or _anyone_ else says; I am_ not_ useless! So you can take that self-righteous attitude of yours and shove right up your…"

Melanie's head snapped back sharply as the edge of Nina's now empty tray smashed into the underside of her chin, sending her staggering back several paces. She hadn't even seen Nina bolt up from the ground, snarling in fury.

Blinking, trying to clear her vision which was swimming nauseously, pain exploding in her jaw, Melanie felt all the breath driven from her lungs as Nina slammed into her side in a low tackle that sent both girls toppling to the floor.

Struggling under the weight of the other girl on top of her, Melanie held her arms up in front of her face to protect herself as Nina rained crushing blows down on her. One blow slipped past Melanie defences, smashing into her face and splitting the skin across her cheekbone, opening up a two inch long gash that instantly began gushing blood down Melanie's face and neck.

Twisting to the side slightly to avoid Nina's next blow, Melanie launched one arm upward, impacting Nina squarely in the face with her elbow, crushing in Nina's nose, snapping her head to the side with bone-jarring force.

Left slightly dazed by the impact, Melanie took advantage of Nina's momentarily distracted state to drag herself forward until she managed to curl her legs up against her torso, feet planted into the other girl's soft stomach.

With a surge of strength, Melanie heaved her legs upward, pitching Nina off of her and sending her crashing to the ground a full dozen feet away. Within moments, both girls were climbing somewhat unsteadily to their feet, Nina's face now bearing an oozing flow of blood from her ruined nose to match Melanie's own bloody cut.

Screaming their respective rages and hatreds for one another, Melanie and Nina closed with one another swiftly to engage once again.

Nina ducked swiftly to avoid a vicious right-cross, bringing her own tightly clenched fist forward and burying it into Melanie's stomach. The shorter blonde doubled over at the blow, curling around Nina's fist. She followed up with a hammer-blow to the side of Melanie's head that sent her crashing into a nearby table.

Picking herself up, her head pounding, face stinging and now her ribs throbbing in pain, Melanie launched herself at Nina with renewed intensity.

Waiting until the last moment, Melanie pitched her weight down, making as if to try and sweep Nina's legs out from under her. As soon as she saw the other girl adjust to block the incoming blow, Melanie instead launched herself into the air with a single fluid surge of motion. Sailing up smoothly, Melanie twisted herself in midair, reaching out to grip the top of Nina's head, bringing her back leg forward, driving her knee into the girls' already mangled face.

Nina's head snapped back a second time, blood bursting in a gushing fountain.

Maintaining her forward momentum, Melanie rolled over Nina's back, slipping her hand down and forward to slip her arm around Nina's throat. As Melanie landed on her feet, she immediately heaved forward, pulling the older girl backwards and flipping her over and hurling her through the air.

Eyes wide, seeing the world upside down for the briefest of moments, Nina felt herself slam into the metal counter of the cafeteria serving line. Aluminum panels crumpled and glass sneeze barriers shattered as Nina slammed into them upside down and on her side, bouncing off and slumping to the ground.

Recovering quickly, Nina shook her head to clear her vision, and found to her shock, Melanie darting forward, foot lashing out in a low side-kick aimed at her head.

Reaching out, Nina managed to catch the smaller girl's foot with only inches to spare and twisted savagely, pulling Melanie from her feet before swinging the girl around, smashing her into the counter next to her.

Crawling away, Nina staggered to her feet in time to see Melanie renew her assault.

Bobbing and weaving like an American boxer, Nina kept her hands held up high before her, elbows tucked in tight to her upper body. Blocking several vicious blows, she snapped her fists out in a blurring combo of rapid jabs that pounded into Melanie's stomach and already injured ribs.

Seeing Melanie wince slightly, her arms dropping just enough to open a momentary hole in her defences, Nina instantly capitalized on it. She slipped one fist through, snapping it in a brutal uppercut that struck Melanie full in the chin. The girl's head snapped back and she pitched backwards, crumpling to the ground.

Standing over Melanie's prone body, chest heaving with exertion, Nina glared venomous death down at her fallen opponent. Melanie groaned and twitched slightly, showing that she would soon recover. Nina didn't intent to grant her the opportunity.

"You fucking little _cunt_," she hissed, eyes blazing with green fire. "How_ dare_ you? You filthy, useless, defective piece of _junk_! I'll _kill_ you, you God-damned broken reject!" Lifting one foot, Nina prepared to bring it smashing down on Melanie's chest, a blow that was guaranteed to crush and shatter her entire ribcage.

Nina noticed the sudden flash of a gold-topped beige and blue blur in the corner of her eye and before her brain had time to process what was happening, she found herself blinking up at the ceiling, bursts of light exploding in her vision.

"Would someone like to explain to me just what in the world is going on here?"

Struggling, Nina managed to lift her head enough to gaze down the length of her body. To her eternal consternation and burning irritation, she saw the agency's Golden Girl herself standing over her, twin blonde pigtails virtually bristling with barely-constrained anger.

Triela's bright baby-blue eyes glared daggers down at Nina, who managed to claw her way to her feet. She was dressed in a pale cream-coloured sweater-vest over a crisp white dress shirt that was cinched around her slim throat by a navy-blue neck-tie and was tucked into a matching coloured pleated skirt that fell to the middle of her olive-skinned, leanly muscled thighs. Black knee-high riding style leather boots completed Triela's outfit.

"The little bitch attacked me, that's what happened," Nina retorted snappishly. "You can ask anyone here; she just walked up and attacked me, completely unprovoked. I was simply defending myself."

"Unprovoked Nina? Really?" Triela asked incredulously, thin arms folded across her slim chest. Her voice was hard and flat as she went on, demanding an explanation. "Do you actually expect me or anyone else to believe that? What did you _actually_ do to push her over the edge?"

"She said," Melanie mumbled unsteadily, only now beginning to climb back to her feet. "She said that…that I was going to be…to be scraped. And that…people were…betting on when…it would happen."

Turning back from Melanie, Triela levelled an icy-cold glare on Nina, frowning with distaste. "Is this true?"

"It was a joke," Nina snapped defensively, supremely indignant at the notion of being lectured by a girl who was a full head shorter than her who bore the appearance of being a full two years her junior. It was difficult for many to remember that, despite Triela's short, slim frame and sweet-faced youthful look, she was the oldest and most senior of all the agency's cyborgs. She was, in actuality, almost four years Nina's _senior_.

"Oh I'm sure you thought it was, Nina. Just what the hell is your problem, anyway? Do you seriously get off on picking on people like this? Do you think it _helps_? Yes, Melanie has her problems, but that does_ not_ give _you_ the right to humiliate her about it, either in public, or private.

"I know this is a concept you have a hard time grasping Nina, but we're a _team_ here at the Agency. We all rely on each other for aid and support and having us clawing each others' eyes out doesn't help that."

"Well you can keep that moron's support Triela! I don't want someone who stands a better chance of putting a bullet in _my_ head by accident anywhere near me during a mission. She's a totally incompetent, screw-up, waste-of-space!"

"And I seem to remember that it took _you_ several days before you were even allowed out on the ranges to practice when others were around because of how erratic your aim was," Triela fired back hotly. "You certainly enjoy mocking others Nina, but you conveniently ignore the fact that you aren't exactly perfect yourself.

"Now why don't you go clean yourself up, while I deal with cleaning up your mess?"

The pair spent several long tense moments glaring at each other, until finally Nina snapped a short, crisp nod, mouth curled upwards with distaste. She snapped out a harsh, derisive, "Yes, _mother_," burning turning on her heel and stalking out of the cafeteria, face still leaking blood in a slow, torpid flow.

Triela turned back to face Melanie then, who was dabbing at the gash on her face with a napkin that Allison had handed to her; her trio of friends now gathered around her.

"Thanks Triela, I…"

"Don't thank me, Melanie," Triela snapped crossly. "I should never have had to get involved in the first place. What is the matter with you, attacking her like that?"

"Hey, that's not fair Triela; you didn't hear what Nina was saying to her. I would have punched her face in myself," Allison exclaimed defensively.

"No, you wouldn't have Allison," Triela replied sternly. "You, just like everyone else who's suffered Nina's attitude, knows enough to ignore her jibes. She enjoys it when you react to her and the fiercer your reaction, the more she enjoys it. Melanie knows this."

"So you would have had her just swallow Nina's bullshit?" Lucretia asked hotly, arms slung protectively around Melanie's shoulders.

"Yes, that is _precisely_ what she should have done. Nina may be a cruel, cold-hearted, stuck-up bitch, but no matter what she may have said to antagonize her, it's going to go on record that Melanie was the one who struck first."

She refocused her attention on Melanie then, how was busy studying the intricate details of the marble patterns on the floor tiles at her feet. "Look Melanie, for what it's worth, I would have liked to beat her face in too, had I been in your position. But I meant what I said about us all being a team. We_ need_ to work together, even if we don't always get along. Back when Marissa first came here, she and Henrietta absolutely _despised_ each other. But they worked out their problems and now they're practically best friends.

"Now I'm not saying you should try to be friends with Nina; you stand more of a chance of talking Padania into changing their minds and becoming model citizens than you do of making friends with her. But you _do_ need to find a way to work together civilly."

"Sure, that's easy," Melanie snapped irritably. "Just tell her to stay the hell away from me and we'll get along fine,"

Triela sighed in exasperation, hands planted on her slim hips. Introspectively, she couldn't really blame Melanie for her vehemence. The truth was: she felt bad for the girl. A week into her training and nothing seemed to be going right for her. Triela could see the determined fire in the other girl's eyes; the fierce drive to prove herself and show everyone that she could do the job that was expected of her and could sympathize. Triela knew well the pain of dissatisfaction that came with being proved inadequate.

"I'll tell you what I'll do Melanie," she went on finally, after several minute's careful consideration. "You know I have to report this incident to Mr. Croce and the Chief. They probably already know about it anyway. But they are both familiar with Nina's bad attitude and I promise that I'll do my absolute best speaking to them on your behalf. At the very least, I can honestly tell them that you were able to go toe-to-toe with Nina, who has over a years' worth of experience and training with close-quarters-battle under her belt. Frankly Melanie, I'm more than a little impressed with your performance."

"R…really?" she stammered weakly, shocked that, after what had happened, she was actually being _praised_ for something. And praised by _Triela_, no less.

"Yes really," Triela replied with a soft, matronly chuckle. "Now like I told Nina, you should probably go get yourself cleaned up before Jacob comes looking for you. Preferably however, you might want to pick a washroom somewhere on the opposite side of the compound from Nina."

Despite herself, Melanie managed to work out a brief chuckle of guanine mirth, nodding in agreement. "That sounds like a good idea. And thanks Triela."

"Don't worry about it. I told you: we're all a team here."

With Allison and Lucretia helping to support her from either side, Melanie slowly made her way out of the cafeteria.

* * *

Jacob's entire body was veritably _vibrating_ with repressed rage as he listened to Jean recount the report he had received of the brawl between Melanie and Nina in the cafeteria less than an hour ago.

Standing beside him, his broad-shouldered bulk overtopping Jacob by several inches, Costante seemed to be a matching mood of fiercely controlled anger. The man's dark brown eyes burned like twin coals in their just faintly deep-set sockets and his large hands clenched and unclenched at his sides reflexively, as if he were itching to wrap them around something and squeeze.

"This kind of behaviour is absolutely inexcusable," Jean said, his voice bearing its typically cold, emotionless tone of rigid professionalism. "It is thanks only to the clear and emphatic effort put forward by Triela that I am not recommending Nina and Melanie both be sent in for immediate reconditioning. That decision I leave up to each of you.

"However: if such an incident ever occurs again, be it between each other or with another cyborg, I will make that order, regardless of any objection on your parts. Is that understood, gentlemen?"

"Yes sir," Jacob and Costante said in unison.

"Very good. Now I believe you both have a cyborg to discipline. So I suggest you get to it."

Filing out of Chief Lorenzo's office, the man himself having chosen to remain silent for the entirety of the conversation, Jacob stopped just outside the door, waiting for Costante to say something.

"Well?" Jacob finally demanded, after a couple of minutes of silence between them.

"Well what?" Costante replied curiously, his deep rumbling baritone voice carrying the cultured accents of high breeding.

"Aren't you going to make some smart-assed comment about Melanie flipping out on Nina?"

"I don't see why I would," the man replied, shrugging his massive shoulders indifferently. "You think I don't know how much of a bitch Nina can be sometimes? Frankly Jacob, I'm impressed that Melanie had the balls to stand up to Nina like that. Might do her some good to have had someone finally be willing to take a swing at her."

"Well I'm glad you're taking this so well, Barone," Jacob said sarcastically. "But maybe if you'd done something to curb her haughty attitude before now, this would never have happened at all."

"Ah yes, well, the glories of hindsight, eh? Don't worry though Jacob, I definitely intent to have a little…talk with her."

Jacob frowned at the odd undercurrent to the man's tone and glanced up at him wonderingly. Costante's face was a hard, impassive mask though, completely unreadable. "Uh, yeah, right. You do that. Anyway, I better go find that little idiot of mine. She's lucky I'm not sending her in to get her whole damned brain wiped and reprogrammed."

"If you don't mind my asking, why aren't you?" Costante asked, honestly curious as to his colleagues' line of thought.

"Why bother?" Jacob scoffed in response. "She's being scrapped by the middle of next month anyway. I fail to see the point of trying to rehabilitate someone already on death-row. It's just a waste of money and resources."

Costante frowned in thought, methodically cracking each knuckle in both hands, one at a time. His eventual reply was a deep, quiet mumble. "Well, I guess if you look at it that way, it kind of makes sense. Still seems like a waste, to me."

"She's mine to waste Barone. I'll see you around." The other man's reply was delivered to Jacob's back as he strode off down the corridor without waiting for it.

He knew that Melanie would be in the engineering wing having her injuries looked at, the damage to her face and ribs repaired. Instead of heading straight there, however, Jacob made a detour to the equipment storage room instead and spent a considerable stretch of time digging around the massive piles of seemingly random detritus and junk that had been crammed into the room in every conceivable fashion.

Finally he managed to locate something with a close enough approximation to what he was looking for to be suitable to what he had in mind. Then, bag slung under one arm, Jacob made his way down to the technological research and development labs; specifically, their metal fabrication workshop.

Half-an-hour later, having stopped off at the physical training field to store the heavy canvas bag in a locker to keep from having to lug the ponderously heavy thing around with him, Jacob made his way over to the medical wing to pick up his cyborg.

He found her waiting outside an operating room on the second floor, slumped in a thinly-cushioned seat along the outside wall. She had obviously already been looked at by the doctors, as whatever injuries she had suffered during the fight had been tended, leaving behind only a single broad bandage affixed to her face as evidence that she'd been hurt at all.

Lucretia and Allison were seated to either side of her, both girls leaning in close, whispering what were no doubts words of encouragement and reassurance.

A chance look out of the corner of one eye by Melanie caught sight of him approaching from down the hall and with a brief flash of panic in her eyes she jumped to her feet and stood facing him. The other two girls rose slowly, knowing well enough to keep back a few steps to allow Jacob to confront her alone.

He chose to remain silent for a time and only glared at her, letting the tension built within her as her own anxiety worked to dig at her insides.

Finally, when the light of panic in Melanie's eyes was beginning to overwhelm her, Jacob spoke. "Follow me and keep your mouth shut." He flicked his gaze over her head to stare down her two friends, both of whom bore expressions of grim determination. "I'm sure you two have other places you need to be, so I suggest you get there."

Nodding stiffly, Allison and Lucretia strode away down the hall, pausing only long enough to lay a quick, comforting hand on her shoulder before continuing on. Once they had left, Jacob turned to lead Melanie back out through the building and then down to the athletic training fields.

It was still raining heavily, though the worst of the storm had passed them by as it skirted along more to the south, closer to the coast. Both were soaked through to the skin by the time they reached the training grounds, Jacob already drenched from his previous trek across the compound.

The entirety of the walk had been made in complete silence and Jacob held to that as he crossed over to the row of lockers. Set on a concrete pad and covered with a heavy-framed, corrugated aluminum roof to keep them and their contents dry, Jacob opened up one of the lockers near the end of the row and withdrew the heavy bag.

Constructed of thick, stiff black canvas, its multiple pouches affixed to a rigid aluminum frame for better support and weight distribution, the military-style rucksack dragged at Jacob's arms, needing to use both hands to lug it over to where Melanie waited.

Setting the heavy bag down in front of her, he pointed over to the training field. "You're going to run forty-five laps of the athletic track; that's fifteen miles. And you're going to wear this," he indicated the bag at her feet.

Nodding mutely, she reached down to pick up the canvas bag, grunting in surprise as it resisted her effort. Using both hands now, she managed to lift it up to a level where she could slip it over her shoulder and onto her back.

"How…how much does this thing weigh?" she asked while buckling and cinching the chest strap, adjusting the fit of the shoulder straps until the bag rested snug against her body, positioned as high up on her back as possible. She was more than mildly alarmed as it dragged at her incessantly, threatening to send her toppling over onto her back.

"One hundred-twenty pounds," he replied simply. She gaped at him mutely in shock, eyes bulging slightly. "One hundred and twenty pounds? That's almost as much as _I_ weight!"

"And it's only going to feel heavier the longer you stand here."

Horrified at what was being demanded of her, but unable to do anything to change the situation, knowing that she couldn't disobey her handler, Melanie set off for the third-of-a-mile loop, staggering under the massive weight on her back and shoulders.

* * *

Melanie felt as if she was in Hell.

Within the first fifteen laps, Melanie was fighting for each step as every muscle in her body screamed in tortured agony. She shivered as the steady rain continued to pound down on her, soaking her skin and seeping in to chill her down to the bone. Her strawberry-blond hair was a matted snarl plastered to her skull; thin, dripping strands glued to her face that she didn't even bother trying to claw away.

Each ragged breath she sucked in shuddered through her burning chest, made all the worse as her throat continued to close spasmodically with each wracking sob that hit her.

Tears coursed down her face as she sobbed quietly, her shame and humiliation warring with the sheer physical agony ripping through her for dominance as to what was more prevalent in her mind at the moment.

Her shoes were caked in mud, the spatters running up the legs of her pants. Large brown-black stains adorned both knees from where she'd slipped and fallen; her hands and arms similarly caked to her elbows. The heavy rain had reduced the crushed gravel running track to a thick, swampy mess and she was finding it increasingly difficult to move as the weight of the rucksack only served to press her deeper down into the mud.

Panic blossomed in Melanie's mind as she took another step forward and felt the deepening mud sucking at her foot. Fighting against the vacuum seal, she pulled desperately to work herself free. Her panic flared bright and hot as she felt her foot instead popping free from her shoe altogether and desperately tried to keep from losing her shoe.

Unbalanced, the rucksack's weight pitching her to the side, Melanie twisted around to her side as she slammed to the ground with a wet, sucking _plop_. Instantly her pants and shirt were soaked through with wet, sticky mud and she felt it seeping into her thigh and side.

Trapped in her abject misery, Melanie was helpless to do anything more than simple lay on the ground sobbing. She pounded one tightly balled fist against the ground in an expression of her bitter frustration. Why did she even bother? Nina was right, she_ was_ a useless reject. The only thing she was good for was being the object of everyone else's scorn or pity, both of which she hated.

She heard Jacob approaching, having kept up with her from the beyond the inside edge of the running track, following her silently. Each time she'd fallen he had been there quickly to order her back to her feet and to keep moving. And this time was no different.

"Get up," he barked savagely, looming over her, his dark-skinned face hidden in murky, gloomy shadows.

"I can't," she sobbed pitifully, hiccupping now as her crying increased in fervour.

Snarling viciously, Jacob knelt down slightly, roaring at her in unbridled rage and frustration. "I said get up!"

"I can't!" she screamed shrilly, sobbing into ground, loathing the sound of her own voice as she completely broke down in front of him. "It's too heavy. I…I can't get up."

"Bullshit!" Jacob growled. "You are a Second Generation Combat Cyborg, with the equivalent strength, speed and stamina of four adult human men. That rucksack is nowhere _near_ the limit of what you can carry. Now stop your bitching and whining and get the hell up and start marching!"

Melanie only sobbed all the harder as her Conditioning now kicked in as an added layer of misery on her already crushing emotional load. The struggle to comply with her handler's direct order fought to overcome the simple fact that she was physically incapable of obey. The result was that she felt her stomach churning and tightening in growing waves of nausea.

"Jacob please," she bawled, begging him to relent. "I can't move. It's…it's too much, I can't.

She sensed more than she saw him squat down beside her, his voice harsh and demanding as he addressed her. "Look at me." When she didn't comply, her mortified shame making her unwilling to meet his gaze, he repeated himself, now roaring in anger. "Look. At. Me!"

It finally took the relentless clamping bite of her Conditioning to force her head around and she stared up at him, her face almost completely covered in grainy, gravelly mud.

"I don't care what load of psycho-analytical emotional baggage bullshit you've told yourself that's convinced you that you can't do this but you _can_. You are a combat cyborg Melanie and this is what you were designed to do.

"I used to lug around a rucksack just like that one for fourteen miles, twice a day every day, for four months during basic training. Sixty pounds of gear. That bag may weigh twice as much as mine did, but you're also far more than twice as strong as I was back then so stop giving me excuses."

She lowered her gaze once he'd finished, his growling barking tone ringing in her ears. "It's not an excuse Jacob, I swear. I just. Can't. Do it."

"Then I guess I'll just go find Nina and tell her she's won then," Jacob snapped, his tone dripping venom.

"W…what does that mean?" Melanie stammered, twisting her face back up to meet his gaze.

"She said that you're useless right? Among other things I would assume. So if you're just going to lie here in the mud and sulk then I guess I can go tell her that she's right. That you really _are_ useless."

Lower lip quivering, tears streaming down her face to mix with the rain, Melanie struggled to find her voice, to offer some protest; to somehow, anyhow, put up some kind of defence for herself.

"I…I'm not…useless," she whimpered.

"Then prove it," Jacob snapped. "Prove that stuck up cunt wrong. God damn it Melanie, I warned you on your very first day what kind of person Nina is. I _told_ you to be careful around her, that she enjoys tearing into people like that. She's the agency's resident interrogation expert Melanie, so what does that tell you about her?"

"She said…she said that…people are betting on…on when I'm going to be…be," she fought to get out the words, her sobs continuously overcoming her. "She said I'm going to be scraped."

"And unless you do something to change their minds, you will be," Jacob said flatly, shocking her into silence, her tears momentarily forgotten.

"You mean I…I really_ am_ going to be scraped?" she asked, horrified.

"In three weeks, unless you start showing signs of drastic improvement and can prove to Jean and Chief Lorenzo that you can be a viable field operative, then yes, you will be decommissioned and destroyed.

"So what do you want to do Melanie? Because you can just give up right now and I'm about ready to haul you back to Bianchi and his team and have them pull the plug on you. This pathetic, defeatist attitude of yours is really starting to piss me off and frankly I'm sick of.

"Or, you can stop all of this bitching and whining you've been doing, get off of your ass and actually _do_ something to show everyone here, myself included, that you _aren't_ useless and that you _can_ do the job." Jacob straightened then, stepping back to stare down at her, splayed out in the mud, filthy, soaking wet and wracked with pain and tears.

"It's up to you Melanie. What do you want to do? Lie there with your face in the mud, or shove Nina's words back down her self-righteous mouth?"

Melanie laid there for what, to her, seemed a very long time, thinking. Bitterness and self-loathing threatened to smother her, to drag her down into the black morass of despair and despondency. It was a cloying, suffocating feeling that made her sorely tempted to just give in, to give up and let Jacob take her to the doctors have them end the charade that her life had become.

But then, she thought of her friends. Allison, her room-mate Lucretia, Kara; they believed in her. Yes they pitied her and she hated it, but that was an issue of her own feelings, not theirs. That they felt bad for her and went of their way to help her and cheer her up was simply an expression of their friendship.

Allison's handler Brian had gone out of his way to make her feel better about herself. It wasn't his job; she wasn't his cyborg, he'd had no reason to help her other than a pure personal desire to.

Even Triela had stuck her neck out by vouching for her in her report of the fight to Mr. Croce. How could she think of rewarding all of their efforts by just giving up and surrendering?

And then she thought of Nina. Her smug, self-satisfied face of righteous triumph. Her laughing, gloating eyes.

In a flash Melanie felt her bitterness and self-recriminations burn away. She would be _damned_ before she let that bitch win. If for no other reason at all, she would _not_ give up. If only to flaunt her continued survival and operation in front of Nina, Melanie vowed she would continue on, would live and fight.

She'd known it deep down inside that very first day, when watching Triela and Alpha sparring not fifty feet away from where she now lay, that she was a warrior, just like them. That same sensation was back, stronger than ever before and she was again certain of it. She _was_ a warrior. And warriors did not give up. They fought with every single breath, with every ounce of their strength, until that last breath was torn forcibly from their lungs and that last bit of effort had been spent.

Her tears drying, eyes burning with a reborn determination, Melanie growled to herself as she twisted about until she had her hands and feet under her. With a monumental concerted effort, she slowly levered herself up, staggering up to her feet. The effort left her entire body trembling with exhausted exertion and she had to fight for several minutes to steady her breathing.

"That's better," Jacob said dryly from beside her. "I was starting to wonder there, for a minute. Here." He handed her a water bottle which she accepted gratefully and immediately began sucking back on it. After only a few deep mouthfuls, Jacob forced it down, away from her greedy mouth.

"Okay, that's enough for now. The last thing you want to do is over-hydrate yourself."

"Yes sir," she replied, her voice and body both much steadier now.

After Jacob had taken back the bottle and had offered her a rag with which she wiped some of the mud from her face, he stepped back a pace and waved a hand out before him to indicate the track. "Now that you seem to have made up your mind, get going. You've still got twenty-six laps to go." With only a fiercely determined nod as her answer, Melanie staggered forward, pressing on with her gruelling punishment.

_This is for you, you fucking bitch,_ Melanie swore to herself. _I refuse to give you the satisfaction of beating me down. I will see you eat your words, I swear to God._

It took Melanie over three and a half hours to finish the remaining twenty-six laps. She fell and collapsed from pain and exhaustion more than a dozen times more before she was through. Each time, Jacob was there, but never again since that last, total breakdown did he yell or chastise her. He would simply stand beside her, waiting patiently for her to clamber back to her feet. He would then calmly offer her the bottle of water, giving her a moment to take a few mouthfuls and catch her breath, before waving her on. And when she was through, when she collapsed for the final time at the end of the forty-fifth lap and she was finally done, came the greatest reward: he helped her out of the soaking wet, mud-caked rucksack and back up to her feet, looked down at her and simply said, "Well done."

Instantly, it had all been worth it; joyous glee and profound satisfaction exploding within her chest.

Then Jacob ruined it slightly when he continued on: "You're going to do this same run every day before you go to bed, for a week. If you ever screw up like this again, I'll add an extra ten pounds to the weight in the bag and you'll still have to do the same forty-five laps. Each time you make a big mistake, it'll be another ten pounds. Got it?"

"Yes sir," she replied, still slightly breathless from the forced march.

"Good. Now go get yourself cleaned up. You look like you're going to need an hour in the shower to get all of that mud off. When you're finished, meet me down at the indoor range."

"Yes sir."

She slowly and weakly strode off in the direction of the cyborg dormitories, her legs trembling under her. For the first time in almost a week, Melanie felt herself as being truly and perfectly happy. Not even after her talk with Mr. McDonnell, or after math class with Lucretia and Allison, had she felt this elated and relieved. She felt…unburdened. Knowing that her handler was honestly and genuinely proud of her efforts and that he truly believed her capable of living up to the agency's expectations of her was a liberating feeling that completely changed _everything_ for her in her mind.

And all it had taken was loosing her temper and punching someone's face in to do it.

Melanie smiled to herself, head bobbing back and forth as she silently chuckled under her breath. _Totally worth it_.


	5. Chapter 04: Whispers of Hope

Chapter 04: Whispers of Hope, Screams of Betrayal

Jacob's nose wrinkled against the almost overwhelmingly cloying scent of antiseptic that permeated the small, elevated observation booth. Banks of monitoring equipment, currently manned by a team of medical technicians, ran the full length of the front wall, filling the room with a low, droning hum. Massive full-length windows above the equipment, sloped slightly outwards, permitted him an unrestricted view down into the testing lab below.

A second team of technicians were scurrying about in the lab, setting up for the test. A young man with painstakingly and meticulously trimmed and gelled hair, dressed in a crisply white and heavily starched lab coat was working on configuring a set of twelve computer screens; his head was bowed over the single master-screen positioned behind the others, hands darting across the keyboard. An additional pair of technicians, both women, hovered around Melanie, who was dressed in just her black sport's bra and a pair of dark-blue shorts.

He watched idly as she fidgeted with discomfort. She was continuously rolling her shoulders and shifting her balance about from foot to foot. The source of her irritation was the numerous sticky white electrode pads the two women were affixing to various parts of her upper body, from head to her waist.

Melanie lifted one hand to scratch at the tight-fitting cap of thin black fabric that had been set onto her head, held in place with a Velcro strap under her chin, earning that hand a light slap from one of the technicians in admonishment. Several dozen sensor pads made an almost dizzying array of bundled wires that ran down the length of Melanie's body and snaked across the floor to another computer station in one corner of the lab.

"Please stop moving around Melanie; it's just going to make this take longer," the other technician said blandly as way of chastisement.

Melanie frowned, head bent forward slightly, eyes fixed on a spot on the floor a few feet in front of her toes. "I can't help it; these things itch like crazy."

The first technician offered Melanie a warm, consoling smile as way of apology. The woman placed one thin-fingered hand on her shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. "Well the sooner we get through these tests, Melanie, the sooner you can take them off, okay?"

Jacob saw Melanie reply wordlessly with just a thin, uneasy smile and a nod. She settled down right after, managing to stay perfectly still as the technicians finished applying the last sensors to her arms and chest.

"Okay Melanie, now that you are all set up, why don't you position yourself in front of the screens?" Doctor Fernando Bianchi, head surgeon and chief researcher in the cybernetic prosthetics program, keyed the microphone in front of him, his even-toned, slightly nasally voice echoing slightly through the room below. He waited patiently as she followed his instructions, the multitudes of wires trailing behind her. Once she was positioned properly, he continued. "What we're going to do is test your hand-eye coordination. We will run you through a sequence of lighting up various touch-screens, which you will tap as quickly as possible.

"If the screen lights up red, we want you to tap the screen with your left hand and if the screen lights up green, tap with your right hand. Do you understand?" When she replied that she did, Bianchi nodded to the male technician seated behind the series of screens, facing Melanie. The young man started up the sequence and after a several seconds' delay, one of the twelve screens blinked to life in front of Melanie.

Jacob watched as, over the next five minutes, Melanie progressed through the increasingly complex and rapid-paced sequence with a determined precision that he found more than slightly amazing. He was forced to remind himself that, despite whatever problems Melanie was having, she _was_ still a multi-million Euro combat cyborg, with physical abilities well beyond those of an average human. Focused as closely as he had been on her faults, he'd forgotten that fact.

As the sequence ran down to its end, Bianchi once again spoke into the microphone before him, his voice echoing slightly in the lab below. "Very good Melanie. Why don't you take a few moments to relax while the technicians set up the next phase of the test?" Again she simply nodded mutely, stepping back to take a seat on a thinly-padded stool one of the technicians brought over for her. The second technician handed her a small glass of water that, after accepting it graciously, she began to sip at delicately.

It only took a couple of minutes to reset the system and ready it for the second part of the test, which Melanie jumped into with an equal level eager intensity. While essentially the same as before, the second phase involved using different shapes rather than different colours to indicate the hand she was to use. Again Melanie's hands were an almost dizzying blur as the sequence got faster and faster.

"So; what do you think?" Jacob asked as Melanie finished the second phase and sat back down to relax while the third and final phase of the first test was readied.

Bianchi twisted his head around to stare sideways up at Jacob, brow furrowed with modestly amused incredulity. "We haven't even finished putting her through the first test Jacob. I hardly think it's the time to be speculating about future results." Bianchi turned his attention back to one particular monitor that seemed to show a mapped readout of the muscle activity in Melanie's left arm during the test.

"I'm not looking for an in-depth, full medical analysis Bianchi, just your initial impression," Jacob shot back dryly, rolling his eyes slightly in exasperation.

"Well, if you _must_ know," Bianchi sighed, reaching up to massage a stiff shoulder. "So far I'm not seeing any problems. But as I said Jacob, we've barely even begun here. Trust me though, if there's something physically or mechanically wrong with Melanie, we'll find it."

"Well considering that that's your job, Bianchi, I would hope so," Jacob snapped, irritation flitting across his face. Bianchi stared up at him for several moments longer, frowning with piqued disapproval, lips pressed into a tight line.

The third phase started shortly afterwards, putting an end to any more talk between the two men, which, given the direction each was heading with their respective attitudes, was likely a blessing.

Virtually identical to the previous phase, the final part of the test included the addition of a third shape in the sequence. As Bianchi once again related to her through the intercom, Melanie was instructed to ignore any circle that appeared and not touch that particular screen. The point of the addition was to test her ability to rapidly differentiate between different targets that were presented to her and respond appropriately.

"Her reactions are at a suitably average level for her stage of development, her brain-body coordination seems adequate so far," Bianchi said, mostly to himself, while splitting his attention between the monitors in front of him and watching Melanie herself.

"Then why the hell can't she hit the broad-side of a barn with anything smaller than an assault rifle?" Jacob barked. "For Christ's sake Bianchi, I watched her empty a thirteen-round clip at a target that was only six feet away and she _still_ missed ten of her thirteen shots. There_ has_ to be something wrong with her."

"I wish I had an answer for you Jacob, but unfortunately we're as lost as you are," Bianchi replied, choosing to remain calm in the face of Jacob's growing frustration and irritation. "Why don't you go over what happened down in the indoor range again? Try to be as specific as possible. Any small detail could provide the clue we need to find the source of Melanie's issues and fix whatever might be wrong with her."

With some considerable effort Jacob reined in his irritation. Sucking in a deep, steadying breath, he held it for several moments before releasing it in a long, drawn-out sigh. "Alright, alright, fine. So, like I said, we were down in the indoor firing range training…"

* * *

The echoing cacophony of near-continuous gunfire reverberated through the air with almost deafening force. The long, reinforced concrete confines of the indoor firing range trapped and amplified each sharp, cracking burst until it was a thunderous roar.

This late in the day, the firing range was packed solid as people tried to squeeze in as much extra training time as they could before supper. This crowing only added to the overall noise level as handlers gave instruction and advice to their individual cyborgs, and small groups of support staff stood back from the firing line, chatting loudly to be heard as they waited their turn.

Jacob fiddled with the positioning of his thickly-padded ear defenders, adjusting it over his ears until the PVC-wrapped acoustic foam was fitted snugly against the sides of his head. Even after all of his time working for the Social Welfare Agency, he was still mildly amazed by the physical capabilities of the cyborgs. Standing just in front of him, Melanie was squeezing off rounds from her forty-five, utterly indifferent to the surrounding noise that would have left him or any other regular human being suffering from permanent hearing loss within a few minutes.

Settling his hands down by his sides, Jacob cast a critical eye down the length of Melanie's body, taking note of any small flaw or imperfection with her stance or technique. Unfortunately, as much as he may have wished it to be otherwise, there was very little that he could comment on, as far as mistakes went. Her form was perfect. Her arms were steady, shoulders slightly loose to absorb the minimal recoil force generated by her sidearm.

Yet still Melanie missed almost every shot she took.

The blatant contradictions of the situation left Jacob's head throbbing painfully with frustration. It made no sense. If Melanie was doing everything correctly, then there was no reason for her to still be screwing up. But she was.

One after another, Melanie squeezed off rounds from her pistol, ejecting the empty clip as soon as it was spent and smoothing locking home a fresh one in a single, fluid motion. Without missing a beat she flicked the barrel back up into position and resumed firing.

"Slow down," Jacob ordered, feeling the need to at least try to keep up the appearance of his actually doing something. "The harder you try to rush through it, the sloppier you'll be." He paused then, considering, and after several moments' thought, added: "And keep your arms straight."

"Yes sir," Melanie replied flatly.

Jacob sighed to himself, shifting his weight to lean up against the wooden dividing wall separating their firing lane from the one next to them. He stopped paying attention to what Melanie was doing, his mind beginning to wander. It didn't really matter, he reflected. She was as much just going through the motions as he was. They both knew that time spent training in this manner was a pointless exercise in futility.

His mind wandering back through the events of the day, Jacob couldn't help but feel himself being drawn back to his conversation with Jean earlier. Melanie had three weeks to pass her general combat proficiency test. It had only taken Sophia four days of training to meet the agency's minimum standards, with another two weeks spent bringing her up to an equivalent skill level to the older, veteran girls.

Melanie's cause seemed all but hopeless.

It just didn't make any sense. Even Petra, the agency's prototype Series Two cyborg had managed to meet the training standards within the expected timeframe. More than a dozen cyborgs had been built since then. It was almost as if Melanie wasn't a Second Generation cyborg at all.

Jacob jerked upright at that sudden thought. His eyes bulged slightly as the potential implications and possibilities ran through his mind. It _was_ almost as if Melanie was a Series One, the same as Triela and Henrietta. Jacob recalled the basic orientation training he'd gone through when first joining the SWA. Specifically, he remembered being told about the vast differences in training styles and regimens used between the First and Second Generation girls. Triela and the rest had required wildly different techniques, owing to the lack of pre-programmed knowledge and severe lack of initial physical coordination.

Maybe, if treating Melanie like the Series Two cyborg she was wasn't working, then he needed to start treating her like a Series One.

"Melanie, cease firing," Jacob barked, stepping forward and tapping her shoulder lightly to get her attention. She obediently stopped immediately, thumbing on the safety and clearing the chamber before setting the gun down on the counter and turning around to face him.

"What's wrong Jacob?" she asked, looking up at him quizzically, face creased ever-so-lightly with mild concern.

"Nothing," he replied shortly, flicking the switch that activated the winch to retrieve her target. "I've just had an idea and want to try something."

Removing the paper target form, noting the erratic and wide-spread grouping left by the four out of her nineteen shots to have actually hit, Jacob carried it over to the supply cabinet, crumpling up and dumping it in the garbage before grabbing a new target.

Clipping the fresh target in place, Jacob hit the switch to send it zipping back down the range. Only a few seconds later however, much to Melanie's confusion, which Jacob noted with some small amount of amusement, he stopped the winch, leaving the target dangling only about six feet away.

"We're going to try things a little differently," Jacob explained, turning to face her. "From now on, until you start showing signs of improvement, this is where you will be shooting from. It's how Guise and the other First Generation handlers started off training their girls."

"Do you really think this will work?" Melanie asked, her voice carrying a heavy tone of scepticism.

Jacob shrugged in response, taking up position behind her again. "Why not? It's not like anything _else_ had been working so far."

Frowning, Melanie grumbled out a half-hearted, "Good point," in retort.

Picking up her gun, Melanie loaded in a fresh clip, flicked off the safety and took careful aim at the target hanging at virtual point-blank range. The first shot ripped forward, punching a neat hole through the target near the upper-left corner of the middle "kill-zone" ring. Jacob felt his heart leap expectantly, suddenly feeling hopeful.

Then Melanie fired her second shot, which went almost completely wide, only managing a tiny nick to the right-hand side of the paper. Her next four shots were just as bad. The close range had changed nothing.

Frustrated, upset and more than a little dejected, Jacob rubbed at his temples with the thumb and forefinger of one hand, shaking his head softly. It was hopeless. It truly was hopeless.

Lowering his gaze to the floor, Jacob froze as his eyes caught a sudden flash of movement. Looking up, he studied Melanie as she fired the next round. Again, the same blurring flicker of motion. Taking a step closer, Jacob focused all of his attention on Melanie's arms, waiting for her to fire again.

_What the hell?_ Jacob whispered in his mind, once again just barely managing to pick out the almost imperceptible twitch. He _had_ to be seeing things. There was no way she could be doing what he thought she was doing.

As Jacob continued to carefully watch her however, he only became more and more certain. Right at the moment she pulled the trigger, Melanie was twitching her wrists away from her line of fire, completely throwing off her aim. It was happening so fast that Jacob immediately began doubting himself. Why would she be deliberately throwing off her aim? That made no sense.

Licking his lips, Jacob managed to croak out hesitantly, his voice coming out slightly hoarse. "Melanie what…what are you doing?"

She paused in her firing, twisting her head around to meet his gaze. "I'm sorry Jacob. I'm trying. Really, I am."

"Then why do you keep moving your damned hands?" he snapped, puzzlement turning to irritation. Instantly Melanie's face fell into an expression of blank bewilderment, clearly not understanding what he was talking about. "What? I'm not moving my hands."

Irritation flashed to sudden anger and he glared down at her hotly. "Yes you are Melanie; I can see you doing it! Now what the hell kind of game are you trying to play?"

"Game; what game? Jacob, you're not making any sense."

"Your hands Melanie; every time you're about to shoot, you twitch your wrists to deliberately throw off your aim. Now I want to know why?"

Melanie's look of bewilderment only deepened and she stared at Jacob with a strange expression, as if he'd suddenly grown horns and a third eye. "Jacob, that's insane. Why would I deliberately shoot to miss?"

"I don't know, but it's what you're doing."

"No, I'm not," Melanie snapped fiercely, immediately taking a deep, steadying breath in an effort to calm her own mounting anger and resentment. How many times did he expect her to tell him the same thing before he would believe her?

"Damn it Melanie, yes, you are!" Jacob's patience was dwindling rapidly, his anger at her continuing obstinacy growing in a surging wave. He went on then, his voice tight and clipped "And I can prove it too. Take aim at the target."

Confused, yet unwilling to push the limits of her handler's patience, Melanie hesitantly turned back to face the firing lane and lifted her arms to bring the barrel of her gun in line with the target.

Without warning, Jacob's own hand lashed out, clamping down forcefully on her wrist, holding it in place. When she snapped her head around to look at him in surprise and alarm, she found him glaring at the target, face tight with suppressed anger.

"Now fire," he suddenly barked, catching her off guard. When she hesitated in responding, he flicked his eyes over at her, scowling fiercely. "I said fire!"

Flinching slightly under the force of Jacob's barked command, Melanie quickly shifted her attention back to the target before her. Steadying herself, she adjusted her grip slightly, her palms having grown slick with nervous sweat. She braced her feet, set her shoulders and took careful aim along the black iron sights.

Sweat beading on her brow, Melanie narrowed her eyes as she focused all of her concentration on the singular task of squeezing the trigger. All other external noises and distractions fell away into the dark void of oblivion. Her entire world contracted down to the gun in her hands and the target before her.

Melanie didn't feel herself tightening her finger; didn't feel the gun buck faintly in her grasp as the firing pin slammed home, igniting the gunpowder within the chambered forty-five calibre round, sending it ripping forward.

She saw the explosive flash as the bullet burst free from the barrel; saw the rippling shock-wave as it tore a path through the air. She watched as that bullet spiralled onwards towards the paper target in front of her, her mouth dropping open, eyes bulging wide with disbelief when it punched a nice neat hole dead-center in the target's forehead, right between the eyes.

"Wha…how?" she stammered, unable to reconcile the image facing her.

"Again," Jacob snapped roughly, jerking Melanie from her blank-faced stupor.

Over and over she fired, emptying the rest of her current clip into the paper target, all the while with Jacob's firm, unyielding grip locked on her wrist. To her continual amazement, every single shot found its mark in the target's forehead. The tightly packed grouping of holes formed a vaguely circular pattern less then two inches across.

"See, I told you," Jacob growled, finally releasing her wrist. Melanie could only continue to stare dumbly at the paper, shocked into silence. "I could actually _feel_ your hands bucking against mine, trying to move. Now I am giving you a direct order: tell me why you keep moving your hand just before you shoot."

Sighing, she finally answered after a few moments, speaking slow and deliberate. "Jacob, I swear that I have no idea what you are talking about." She stared up at him, yellowed eyes wide and hopeful.

Jacob glared down at her, fuming inside yet reluctantly forced to admit that she was probably telling the truth. Had she been lying, her conditioning would have clamped down on her mind by now as punishment for defying a direct order. But that still left him with the mystery of why her hands were moving.

"Jacob, obviously something is wrong, but whatever it is, I'm not the one in control of it."

"So, what?" Jacob said sceptically, folding his arms across his chest. "Are you saying that your hands have a mind of their own? That they're conspiring against you to keep you from meeting the proficiency standards?"

"Well I don't know _why_ it happening, just that it _is_. I tried telling you that there might be something mechanically wrong with me. Maybe _now_ you'll finally believe me."

Despite the evidence staring him in the face, Jacob was still highly reluctant to give in and admit that Bianchi and his team had somehow managed to make such a profound mistake. Shaking his head slowly, he told her as such, grumbling. "I don't know Melanie. I just have a hard time believing Bianchi's people could botch things up like that. But," he added quickly when she opened her mouth to offer protest. "I can see that there is definitely something legitimately wrong with you that we need to have checked out. So pack up your gear and we'll head over to the engineering wing to have you examined."

Relief washed through Melanie in a palpable wave that almost caused her legs to buckle. Only with a monumental effort did she manage to remain upright. Even so, her body sagged noticeably, all of the previous tension building within quickly leaching out of her. When finally she offered reply, it was in a voice that was soft and breathy, the voice of thankful reprieve. "Yes sir."

* * *

"Interesting," Bianchi mused thoughtfully, once Jacob finally fell silent in his recitation. "You're certain that her wrists moved every time she shot?"

"Positive."

"Very strange. I've never heard of anything like it before." Bianchi paused to look over the various computer monitors, inspecting their proliferation of information. "Unfortunately, I see no reason to alter my original speculations. Based on all of the evidence collected so far, there is nothing to support the notion of some mechanical defect within Melanie's cybernetic systems."

"Then what the hell's wrong with her, doc?" Jacob demanded roughly. "She says she's not consciously responsible and I believe her. If the problem isn't physical and it isn't deliberate, then what?"

Bianchi was several long, drawn-out moments before responding, his dark eyes finding and holding Jacob's gaze. "You may not want to hear this Jacob; I know you're feelings on the whole field of psychiatric medicine, but…"

"Oh Christ, Bianchi, not this crap," Jacob interrupted, throwing up his hands in exasperation, pulling away from the other man's gaze and turning about to glare at the wall.

Bianchi frowned at Jacob's back, more put-out by the man's derisive scorn than he cared to admit. Shoving aside his own irritation, he pressed on determinedly. "It's the only logical reason left Jacob. If not a physical deficiency and not a deliberate effort on her part, a psychological issue is the only remaining cause."

Jacob spun back to glare hotly at Bianchi, his tone sharp and mocking as he snapped back. "So Melanie's a nut-job, is that what you're saying?"

"No, Jacob that is _not_ what I'm saying," Bianchi retorted, stopping to take a deep, steadying breath, hands held stiffly at his sides. "Look, we all know that despite the efficacy of the current generation of Conditioning therapy, there are still fragments of memory and instinct that remain buried within each girl's subconscious. You need only look as far as Marisa or Allison to see the truth of that.

"Marisa can barely stand to look at a nun without having a panic attack, all because of her retained instinctual memory of the abuse she suffered in a church-run orphanage. Allison is almost deathly afraid of transport trucks due to the one that caused the accident that killed her parents and landed her here at the agency.

"Every single one of the girls here retain _some_ memory of their past. Whether those memories manifest themselves purely as the dreams and nightmares experienced by the first generation girls, or as the instinctual reactions exhibited by the older ones, they _all_ have them.

"It's an unfortunate truth of human nature that the most powerful of instinctual reactions are related to some form a fear response." Bianchi fell silent then, his final words spoken in a sad, almost apologetic tone.

His face falling into morose frown, Jacob slowly strode over to the banks of monitoring equipment and eased himself down into an empty chair. One elbow propped on the edge of the desk, he rested his forehead in his hand. He felt tired. Deep in his bones, a soul-gripping weariness that threatened to drag him down into the inky-black depths of despondency.

He was getting far too old for this. How the hell did Elio put up with it at his age? With the aid of copious amounts of alcohol, no doubt.

He turned his head to gaze through the observation window, watching as Melanie proceeded to throw darts at a series of dartboards in a specified sequence. From what he could see, the majority of her throws had planted darts within the green inner-most ring, with several landing dead-center in the red bull's-eye. The few darts that were outside of either zone had missed by only a few fractions-of-an-inch.

He spoke after a time, still gazing down at Melanie, either unable or unwilling to muster up the effort required to turn his head back to meet Bianchi's eyes. "So basically, some buried memory of her past life is somehow interfering with her ability to shoot accurately?"

The other man nodded simply. "That's right."

"Then why can she still use her rifle effectively? She doesn't seem to have any problem there."

Bianchi scratched idly at his narrow chin-beard, carefully considering the question before answering with a shrug. "Most likely it has to do with the specialised engineering that went into making Melanie into a dedicated extreme-range sharpshooter. The extra layers of conditioning could be overriding her natural instincts. Or," Bianchi added, a sudden realisation striking him as he talked. "It could be that, whatever traumatic memories triggered this fear response within her are associated specifically with handguns, not just firearms in general."

"Half of the girls in the agency were shot by _someone_ in their past lives. It's how most of them end up here," Jacob scoffed, finally deigning to look over at Bianchi. "If it were as simple as that, none of them should be able to do their jobs."

"Well clearly then, it _isn't_ as simple as that, is it? My guess is that the traumatic event was very personally in nature: the murder of a family member no doubt, probably committed in front of her. What do you know of her former identity?"

"Next to nothing," Jacob said reluctantly, scowling at the admission. "The only knowledge the doctors in Napoli had was that she was of Japanese ethnicity and that she had been repeatedly and brutally raped. Judging from the overlapping layers of scar tissue, they were able to deduce that the rapes happened over the course of about two years."

"So she was smuggled into the country from Japan, most likely as part of a Yakuza human trafficking operation and then forced into prostitution." Bianchi frowned, his face twisted into an expression of supreme disgust. "God, there are times I honestly wonder if there is anything left in our species that's actually worth saving."

Jacob chose to ignore the bitter recrimination, as there was little to be said in response. Especially since, more and more, Jacob found himself in agreement with the sentiment.

A brief, flickering glance back out the window into the testing room showed that, with the last of the darts Melanie had thrown, the final phase of the testing had been concluded. The technicians were already crowding close around her to begin removing the electrodes, much to Melanie's profound and most heartfelt relief.

"That sounds the most likely," Jacob replied after a while. "There's just one small problem: the Yakuza's don't _have_ any human trafficking operations this far west of Japan. Most of their foreign rackets are all to the east; west coast America, Canada and Hawaii."

Bianchi shrugged indifferently, speaking with a wearied resignation to the whole situation. "So they're expanding their business dealings. Probably working in concert with the local _Camorra_." Jacob was forced to concede the point, knowing that Bianchi was probably right.

"Unfortunately," Bianchi said, continuing. "That doesn't help us. Without at least some kind of detailed knowledge of whatever traumatic event led to this ingrained instinct and aversion to handguns, we stand next to no hope of finding a solution."

"There has to be some kind of work-around," Jacob insisted, furrowing his brow in deep thought.

"The issue is with Melanie's ability to pass the general proficiency test, right?" Bianchi asked, waiting for Jacob's confirming nod before continuing. "Most of the test involves the girl's ability to react quickly and accurately in a close-quarters urban-assault operation. Room clearing and such."

"Exactly. Which Melanie proved earlier today that she'd a dismal failure at," Jacob pointed out scathingly, recalling her nearly disastrous performance in the assault course that morning with Allison.

"Only if she's using a handgun," Bianchi replied. "There's nothing in the testing standards that say she has to use a gun. It's simply implied."

"Well what the hell else is she going to use?" Jacob asked, baffled as to where the other man could be going with this.

"There are plenty of alternate weapons she could use to get the job done, Jacob. Throwing knives, for example, would be just as effective as a handgun in a close-quarters fight. With her cybernetically-enhanced speed and reaction times, she could easily dispatch a room full of gunmen almost as quickly as a regular operative with a gun."

"There's a bit of a difference between throwing a knife at someone and being able to put five or six bullets in that same someone in the same amount of time, Bianchi."

"That's irrelevant. Melanie's a sniper Jacob. Nine times out of ten, any involvement she has in a joint operation will be the same as Rico's: surveillance and fire-support. All you need is for her to be able to pass the proficiency test, nothing more."

"I suppose," Jacob said hesitantly, not quite ready to fully commit to the new line of thinking Bianchi was proscribing. As a former heavy assaulter himself, Jacob found it difficult to reconcile with the notion of not having a sidearm or any other kind of suitable gun to rely on in a fight. _Never bring a knife to a gunfight_ was how the old adage went, after all. There was a reason for that.

"I'll think about it," Jacob said finally, rising from his seat.

As Jacob pulled open the door to leave, Bianchi muttered under his breath, his words directed at the man's retreating back. "That's all I ask."

* * *

Melanie rubbed distractedly at her arm as she straightened from tying up her shoes. As much effort as she had put into convincing Jacob to take her in for testing, she was unimaginably grateful the whole ordeal was over with. If she had had to spend one more minute with those awful, itching electrode pads glued to her skin, she honestly thought she would have gone mad.

She was also glad to have her normal clothes back on: black T-shirt over a dark red long-sleeved shirt with dark khaki-coloured cargo pants. She knew that it was slightly irrational of her, that the technicians were just doing their jobs, but Melanie could still feel their fingers crawling all over her shoulders, arms, chest and stomach, making her shiver uncomfortably.

Stepping out of the change room, she found the hallway beyond still empty. Realizing that Jacob must still be speaking with Doctor Bianchi, going over the early results of the tests, she decided to plop herself down in a nearby chair to wait.

The testing itself, though, Melanie was forced to admit, had been okay. A bit on the monotonous side, however. I mean, there were only so many different iterations of tapping out a set sequence in a set amount of time before it became boring. The last test though, with the darts, she had thoroughly enjoyed. She felt as if it had been the only test that had actually addressed her problems with aiming.

Melanie was pulled from her reflective thoughts by the sound of footsteps approaching from further down the hall. Glancing over, she spotted Henrietta and her handler Guise making their way towards her. The petit brunette's grey cardigan was slung over one arm, her hair slightly dishevelled above her velvet headband.

Henrietta slowed to a stop as she neared Melanie, Guise striding on for several more paces before noticing and turning around. The younger girl smiled warmly at Melanie, chirping softly in greeting. "Good afternoon Melanie; what are you doing here?"

"Hi Henrietta," Melanie replied, easing up out of her seat to stand before her fellow cyborg. "Jacob brought me in to run some tests."

Henrietta's deep brown eyes widened slightly, a look of mild alarm filling her soft, heart-shaped face. "Tests? Oh no, are you okay?"

Melanie couldn't help but feel warmed by the other girl's sincere concern and offered Henrietta a reassuring smile. "Oh, I'm fine Henrietta, don't worry. He just finally agreed to have me checked out to see why I'm having so much trouble with my handgun proficiency, that's all."

"Oh, okay then."

"Did the tests show anything of what might be the cause of your troubles?" Guise asked, stepping up beside Henrietta.

Melanie shook her head, red-gold hair swishing about her face with the motion. "I'm not sure yet. I actually just finished up a couple of minutes ago. Jacob is still talking with Doctor Bianchi so I don't know how I did."

"Oh, I see then. Well I certainly hope the test results can shed some light into what's been wrong. Rico and Jaime were promised a fellow sniping expert and it would be very rude to deny them their new friend now."

Melanie chuckled somewhat nervously at the good-natured jest, reaching up to twist one lock of hair around her finger. "Um…thank you Mr. Croce.

"Oh, wait, how come you're in the hospital Henrietta?" Melanie asked then, just suddenly realizing that it was still early enough in the evening for training to still be going on. Henrietta's face immediately coloured faintly and she averted her gaze, staring at the ground in embarrassment. "Um, I kind of…fell off the scaling wall while running the obstacle course."

"Oh my God, are you okay?" Melanie asked, her turn now to offer a look of sincere concern.

"Oh yes, I'm fine," Henrietta said quickly, leaning forward slightly in her emphatic effort to assure Melanie that she was indeed all right. "I just landed awkwardly and snapped my knee and had to have it fixed."

"Well that's good. I mean," Melanie hastened to add, noting Henrietta's slightly odd, confused expression. "Not that it's good that you hurt yourself, but that the doctors were obviously able to fix you up, I mean." Melanie scrambled awkwardly trying to explain herself and was relieved when Henrietta giggled lightly in reply.

"I know what you meant, Melanie."

"Oh, right. O-okay then."

Her face burning red, Melanie fidgeted in awkward silence, not knowing what to say or do. Fortunately, she was saved from wanting to sink through the floor in an effort to escape when Henrietta piped up, her whole face brightening expectantly. "Hey Melanie, why don't you come over to Triela and Claes' room for tea and snacks later? I don't think we've formally welcomed you to the agency yet."

"That's a great idea Henrietta," Guise commented, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. Henrietta herself lifted her face up to her handler, face beaming with joy, eyes virtually aglow.

"She can't."

All three gathered turned at the sudden barked comment, finding Jacob stalking towards them, having just left the observation room. "With all of the time Melanie's spent here in the hospital today, she's behind in her training. I intend to have her make up at least some of that time as soon as we get something to eat."

"Can't I at least go long enough to say 'hello'?" Melanie asked, trying hard not to sound pleading.

"No, you can't," Jacob replied gruffly, glaring down at her. "We won't be finished until practically light's-out and we'll be starting again early tomorrow. You're going to need all of the rest you can get. Got it?"

Melanie lowered her gaze to the floor, head hanging as she answered glumly. "Yes sir."

"Good, then let's go. We'll stop at the cafeteria for something quick before heading out to the training grounds."

Nodding mutely, Melanie fell into step behind her handler, pausing when Jacob stopped to meet Guise's disapproving frown and slightly heated glare. Melanie felt an odd tingle of warning shoot up her spine at the look he and Jacob were sharing.

Flicking her gaze over to Henrietta, Melanie found the smaller girl was frowning uncertainly up at Guise, not entirely sure of what to do.

"Was there something else you wanted to discuss Croce?" Jacob asked, his voice tight with forced calm.

Continuing to glare silently at the slightly shorter yet distinctively more heavy-set man, Guise was a while before responding; his own voice was tightly strained and clipped. "No, not really."

"Alright then. I'll see you later."

"Of course."

Jacob resumed walking away from the pair, Melanie quick to follow close behind. They were almost to the stairs leading down to the ground floor before Jacob said anything. He muttered to himself; a quick, quiet growl that Melanie was fairly certain she had not been meant to hear: "Self-righteous ass."

"Um…Jacob?" Melanie asked tentatively, hoping to pull her handler's attention away from Mr. Croce.

"What?"

"Well, uh…what did Doctor Bianchi say? About my problems? Did they found out what's wrong with me?"

"Oh that," Jacob said, just then remembering that she hadn't been told about the results or Bianchi's findings. "No, there's nothing physically wrong with you Melanie, just like I told you. Your issues are all psychological."

"So Mr. McDonnell was right then? It's just an issue with my own confidence?"

"What?" Jacob exclaimed, twisting back to stare incredulously at her. "Of course not. You have _actual_ mental problems, Melanie. Pieces of memory from your past life are stuck in your head and are screwing up your ability to use a gun properly."

"Oh gee, great. That makes me feel _so_ much better then," Melanie growled sarcastically, folding her arms across her chest and pouting slightly. "It's great to know that I'm not depressed or anything, I'm just a nut-job."

"Congratulations Melanie," Jacob growled, continuing to stride forward without looking at her.

Suddenly unnerved by the sudden exclamation, Melanie eyed Jacob somewhat askance, not entirely understanding what had just happened. "Uh…what?"

"I said, "Congratulations." That smart-ass attitude of yours just earned you an extra ten pounds to your rucksack."

Eyes bulging, mouth falling open in shocked disbelief, Melanie stood stock still, watching as Jacob continued heedlessly forward. "What? You can't be serious! Jacob, I can barely carry the thing as it is!"

"One more word and it'll be twenty extra pounds. Now hurry up."

Melanie's mouth snapped shut with a _click_, her whole body trembling slightly with indignant frustration. That was so unfair! But, as Melanie started to feel squirming pangs of nauseous discomfort in the pit of her stomach, warning of an impending clamp-down from her Conditioning, she hurriedly shoved aside her feelings of bitterness and discontent and sprang forward to catch up to Jacob, marching along behind him in silence.

* * *

Melanie tottered unsteadily for several seconds, before crashing face-first onto her mattress. She let out a gloriously satisfied moan of pleasure as her body sank into the bed's springy softness, her synthetic muscles weeping with relief.

"You look like hell," Lucretia pointed out, glibly.

Already dressed for bed in her navy-blue satin pyjamas, edged in purple along the collar, hem and cuffs, Lucretia was seated at the large prefab desk positioned between their beds. She swivelled around in the simple office chair to stare pityingly down at her room-mate. Her raven-black purple-tipped hair swung slightly in limp, damp strands from her recent shower at the sudden movement. She was grateful for the excuse to pull away from the veritable mountain of math homework Priscilla had dumped on them.

"How appropriate then," Melanie growled into her pillow. "Because I certainly _feel_ like I'm in Hell and I would _hate_ to seem out-of-place."

Lucretia sniffed lightly at Melanie's somewhat self-deprecating humour. Leaning back in her seat until it creaked, she stretched her hands over her head. "So I'm guessing your day didn't improve any after Jacob came to pick you up, huh?"

"Not by much," Melanie grumbled, flipping herself over to stare up at the white-washed ceiling. "I don't know if you've heard yet, but Jacob had me run forty-five laps of the athletic track as punishment for starting that fight with Nina."

"He had you running out in the rain?" Lucretia exclaimed in disbelief, her baby-blue eyes widening.

"Rain and mud, yeah. And it gets better: I had to lug around a hundred-and-twenty pound army rucksack while I did it."

Lucretia almost tipped herself over backwards, onto the floor as she jerked back sharply in abject shock. She cried out in horrified denial, "No way! Are you serious? Is he crazy?"

"I don't know," Melanie admitted, lifting her weak, wearied arms to rub the heels of her hands into her eyes. "But honestly, I'm starting to wonder."

"Yeah, no kidding," Lucretia grumbled to herself. "So what happened after? I didn't see you at all the rest of the day."

From her splayed-out position on her bed, Melanie proceeded to relate the few events of note that had occupied the rest of the day for her. She told Lucretia about Jacob's noticing of her wrists moving during firearm's training and how that had led to his finally believing that there might have been something physically wrong with her.

She related the experience of the testing itself, shivering at the renewed memory of the technicians' fingers crawling all over her, as well as her brief conversation with Henrietta and her handler Guise afterwards.

"Oh cool; that was nice of her," Lucretia said cheerfully, adjusting her position on the chair and folding her legs up under her.

"Yeah, I know. Too bad I can't go though. It would have been nice to formally meet Triela and the rest of her group. We all hear so much about them and everything they've done for the agency over the years, it would be nice to be able to talk with them as more than just…I don't know…icons, I guess."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Lucretia said, nodding slowly. "I remember the first time Triela came up to talk to me after I'd found out about her and everything she's done. I think I almost wet myself I was so nervous." That earned a heartfelt chuckle from her room-mate.

"Yeah well, anyways," Melanie continued after composing herself, having to shake the sudden image Lucretia's comment had brought to mind. "After we left the hospital, Jacob and I just grabbed a quick supper and then headed over to the gym. Which is where we've been for the past two-and-a-half hours."

"Ouch; what the heck did he have you doing?"

"Close quarters battle training. I made the mistake of mentioning to him my first day that I was interested. At the time, he said he include it in my training only if I had time for it."

"Guess he's found some time," Lucretia observed, smirking in amusement.

"Yeah, no kidding. With what Doctor Bianchi said about my problems being a result of some past trauma, Jacob's making martial arts training a part of my regular schedule."

"Cool," Lucretia stated simply. When Melanie threw her a dirty glare, she frowned, confused, brow furrowing in thought. "What? You _did_ say you wanted martial arts training, right?"

"Yeah well, that was _before_ I realized that it would entail me getting smacked and thrown around for two hours," Melanie retorted sourly. "I can barely move now, I'm so sore."

"Oh God, you're not going to need me to help you into your pyjamas, are you?" Lucretia asked, a sudden awkward nervousness creasing her features.

Melanie glared at her room mate, retorting sharply in a dry, scathing tone. "No, Lucy, I think I can manage _that_ much, at least. But thank you; your sympathy for my plight is truly heart-warming."

"Hey, what are friends for?" Lucretia chirped, turning back to her homework.

"Good question," Melanie grumbled under her breath, flopping back to stare blankly at the ceiling once more. For a long while, Melanie contented herself with just lying there, listening to the sounds of Lucretia's fingers dancing across the keyboard, along with the low, droning hum of her computer itself.

Melanie smiled suddenly, thinking about her room mate's computer. Being the resident computer hacking master of the agency, Lucretia treated her system with the same amount of obsessive care as Allison did her cars. They could both spend endless hours tweaking and tinkering with each and every individual piece and part. Lucretia's computer was a masterpiece of technological supremacy. At least insofar as Lucretia herself claimed. Melanie could barely understand how to turn the stupid thing on.

From what Melanie had heard from Kara, there was almost seven thousand Euros tied up in the absolute best hardware available. From twin dual-core video cards to eight Gigabytes of memory; from half a Terabyte of hard drive space to the massive thirty-two inch wide, flat-screen monitor. None of which made any sense to her.

Lucretia had even had the Q-Branch crew customize the desk with a specially-designed and modified alcove for the tower itself. Insulated on all sides, including the Plexiglas-panelled door, a small refrigeration unit had been added so that the interior of the alcove was maintained at a constant fifteen degrees, Celsius. Flexible exhaust tubes connected directly to the outlet fans ensured all of the warm air from inside the computer's sculpted black aluminum case was vented out, into the room itself. They had even added a heavy-gauge sliding rack that the computer rested on, so that Lucretia could easily slide it out for any necessary maintenance, or simple tinkering.

"You going to pass out just like that, or do you plan to get changed and take a shower some time tonight?" Lucretia teased lightly without looking away from the screen, interrupting Melanie's thoughts.

Groaning, Melanie heaved herself up into a sitting position, wincing as her muscles pulled painfully in protest. "Changed yes, shower no. I'll shower in the morning."

"Whatever you say, stinky."

Scrunching her face up in an indignant pout, Melanie reached behind her, fist closing on her pillow and snapping around to hurl it at Lucretia. The pillow caught her full-on in the side of her head, knocking her slightly sideways from the sudden impact force.

Lucretia burst out laughing at the surprise attack. Reaching up, she grabbed the pillow and threw it back at her room mate with a playful growl. "Fuck off Melanie; I'm trying to work here."

"Yeah, well, you should have thought about that before you insulted me," Melanie retorted.

Lucretia rolled her eyes, shaking her head in frustration. Catching sight of Melanie's fierce, venomous glare, she twisted around suddenly to face the other girl, throwing her hands up defensively in front of her. "Okay, okay, I'm sorry. Now I _really_ need to get this homework done so, truce?"

"Yeah, okay," Melanie conceded, heaving herself up off of her bed. "I'm too tired and sore to pick a fight with a second cyborg today anyway."

Wincing every few seconds, Melanie slowly and carefully began stripping out of her sweat-stained, dirt-encrusted clothes. She sighed in contentment as she peeled off her socks and the cool air hit the moist skin of her feet.

Dumping all of her dirty clothes in the plastic hamper by the door, Melanie pulled on her own pyjamas: dark green cotton pants and a simple powder-blue tank-top.

She had just plopped herself back down on the edge of her bed when a sudden knock on the door startled both her and Lucretia, who twisted around sharply in confusion.

"Who the heck is that?" she wondered, frowning. "It's less than fifteen minutes until lights out."

"I don't know," Melanie replied, pushing herself back to her feet and padding quickly and silently over to the door.

Pulling it halfway open, she peered out into the hallway and found, much to her surprise, Henrietta standing there, looking up at her expectantly.

"Henrietta? What are you doing here?" Melanie asked, baffled at what the younger girl could possibly want.

"Who is it?" Lucretia called out from within.

"It's Henrietta," Melanie replied swiftly, poking her head back in to answer before turning back to the other girl.

Hands clasped in front of her, Henrietta offered her a warm, sweet smile. "Hi Melanie, I just wanted to ask again if you wanted to come over for tea."

"Uh, Henrietta, you know I can't come over. Jacob said I wasn't allowed." Melanie frowned, unable to understand what the other girl was thinking by coming over. Unless…

Melanie shivered suddenly, just managing to cover her feelings of alarm from showing on her face. She'd heard that prolonged use of the conditioning drugs would inevitably lead to addiction, with memory loss being one of the most apparent symptoms. Henrietta _was_ a first generation cyborg, after all.

"Oh, I know what Mr. Mehrandish said," Henrietta said, easing Melanie's sudden fear. "But actually, I don't think he actually said that you _couldn't_ go, just that you…_shouldn't_."

"What do you mean?" Melanie asked, just as confused now as before.

"Well, he said that you had to get up early in the morning and that you needed your sleep. So spending time hanging out in Triela and Claes' room might not be a good idea, because it would mean less time to sleep."

"You're not being very convincing about why I should come over instead of going to bed, Henrietta," Melanie stated flatly, sighing with a mixture of weariness and genuine exhaustion.

"Oh, well, um," Henrietta stammered, suddenly flustered and nervous. "Oh, I know; Marisa once told me that, sometimes, you need to ignore the rules and just have fun."

Melanie fidgeted, shifting from foot to foot, still feeling uneasy about the idea. "I don't know Henrietta, I'm pretty sure Jacob didn't mean…"

"Oh would you just go to their little tea party?" Lucretia called out, frustrated, from within. "It's not like Jacob will find out anyway, so what's the big deal?"

"Well, what if he comes by to check up on me?" Melanie demanded, withdrawing out of the doorway to meet Lucretia's impatient gaze.

"Has he _ever_ come by to check on you?"

"Well, no; but that doesn't mean he _won't_."

Lucretia rolled her eyes and, unfolding her legs from under her, stood up and crossed over to Melanie's bed. "Fine, if it makes you feel any better, I'll cover for you."

"What do you mean? How?" Melanie asked, watching as Lucretia began stuffing pillows under the covers, shifting them around to form one long, low bump.

"There," Lucretia declared in satisfaction, stepping back to admire her work. "Now, if Jacob comes by, I'll just tell him that you're asleep and it'll look like you're actually in bed.

"I told you that I need to get this homework done, so I'll probably be up for the next hour, at least. You should be back by then, right?"

"That's perfect," Henrietta exclaimed happily, clapping her hands together in delighted glee. "Now you don't have to worry about Mr. Mehrandish getting upset with you and you can come over for tea."

Despite the excellent arguments put forward by both girls, Melanie nevertheless was still hesitant about agreeing. "But, Henrietta…"

"For the love of God, Melanie, _now_ what's the problem?"

Flinching at Lucretia's tone of fed-up irritation, Melanie felt her face heating, suddenly self-conscious and lost about what to do. Both girls seemed to be ganging up on her and no matter what she said she was simply upsetting them more. "It…it's just that…well, I'm already in my…my pyjamas."

At Lucretia's startled look of completely incredulous disbelief, Melanie felt her face burn even hotter. She was caught off guard by Henrietta's sudden burst of bubbling giggles and spun back to face her.

"That's okay Melanie. Both Triela and Claes will probably be dressed for bed as well, by now. No one will mind if you're in you pyjamas."

"Oh well, okay. I guess I can come over for a little while," Melanie sighed, resigned and reluctantly submitting to their relentless peer-pressuring demands. "Just…let me put on some socks at least."

"Sure."

A few minutes later Melanie was gently closing the door to her dorm room behind her and following Henrietta's gently bobbing form down the hall towards the stairs leading to the first floor. Her chin-length light brown hair swayed with each delicate step, the heels of her shoes clicking faintly against the tiled floor.

Before long they were drawing to a halt outside another door, identical to Melanie own, as well as every other door in the cyborg dormitory. Simple, unadorned mahogany polished to a dull shine, with tastefully elegant brass lever fittings.

Reaching out with one small, slim-fingered hand, Henrietta gave two quick, sharp knocks. They had only a few moments to wait before Triela's voice, muffled slightly through the heavy wood door called out, inviting them inside. Stepping through into the room beyond, Melanie found all three of Henrietta's fellow core group of first generation girls waiting, cups of tea in hand.

A set of bunk beds was pushed up against the right-hand wall, a pair of dresser drawers standing opposite. A small round table sat in the middle of the room, four chairs positioned equally around it. A large, multi-paned window faced directly opposite the door, the heavy winter drapes drawn shut. A small end table was pushed up against the wall, between the dressers. An electric kettle and several fancifully decorated teapots rested on top, waiting to be used.

True to Henrietta's prediction, Triela was indeed dressed for bed in her simple pale cream pyjama set and fuzzy purple slippers. Her golden yellow hair was undone from their typical twin pony-tails and left hanging in a shimmering wave down her back, still wet and limp from her shower.

Henrietta's room mate Rico was seated on the edge of Triela's lower bunk with legs crossed, still in her typical outfit of zip-up sweater over a T-shirt and jeans. A small saucer was clutched in one hand and she was nibbling on a small, thin slice of cake.

Triela's own room mate Claes, who Melanie had yet to actually meet, was also in her pyjamas: a simple white lacy nightgown. Her dark, almost blue-black hair was pulled back into a loose braid for sleep. Perched on the edge of her own top bunk, she had her legs folded under her to one side. She held a thin porcelain teacup and saucer in her hands, the cup frozen halfway to her lips as Melanie and Henrietta entered the room.

Turning towards the door as they entered, Triela smiled warmly in greeting. "Hi Henrietta, hi Melanie. I see she managed to convince you to come over."

Melanie glanced at the floor in mild embarrassment, reaching up with one hand to nervously fiddle with one lock of her hair. "Uh, yeah, she did. Between her and Lucy, they managed to brow-beat me into agreeing."

"Well, come in and sit down," Triela offered, waving her forward. "No sense in just standing in the doorway."

Still horribly nervous to be in the presence of the four people who were essentially the founders of the entire agency, Melanie shuffled forward awkwardly and took the seat across from Triela, with Henrietta sitting down to her left.

"Since this is the first opportunity we've really had," Triela started, setting her own teacup down on the table in front of her. "Allow me to formally welcome you to the Social Welfare Agency, Melanie."

"Um…th-thanks," Melanie managed to stammer out. She could feel her heart hammering wildly in her chest. She could scarcely believe what was happening. These four were literally living legends within the agency and here they were welcoming her into their midst, as if it were the most normal thing in the world!

Realizing that Triela was talking again, Melanie frantically refocused her attention back to what she was saying. "…have both seen you around the training fields, but I don't think you've had the chance to really meet Rico in more than just brief passing. So this is Henrietta's room mate, Rico."

"Uh…hi Rico. N-nice to…to meet you," Melanie again just barely managed to croak out.

"Hello," Rico chirped cheerfully, a wide grin fixed on her softly rounded face, her bright blue eyes holding the slightly vacant look that was characteristic of someone on heavy conditioning.

"And this is my room mate Claes. You've probably never met her at all yet."

Claes sighed softly, soft blue-gray eyes rolling behind the lenses of her wire-frame glasses. "I'm sure we've seen each other around the cafeteria during meals, Triela. It isn't as if the agency is _that_ big of a place." Her voice losing its critical, acerbic bite, Claes turned her attention towards Melanie. "Nevertheless, it's nice to meet you Melanie. Would you like a cup of tea?"

"Uh, s-sure, thanks. And it's nice to…m-meet you too Claes."

Unfolding her legs, Claes hopped down to the floor, taking a moment to rearrange the hem of her nightgown before moving to one of the dressers behind Melanie.

"How's your leg, Henrietta?" Rico asked as Claes was rummaging through a set of tin canisters.

"It's okay. The doctors managed to repair my knee without having to completely replace it. I should be fine to go back to training by tomorrow."

"That's great news, Henrietta," Triela said seriously, her face showing genuine relief mixed with some lingering concern for her friend.

"What kind of tea do you prefer Melanie?" Claes' sudden voice sounding from behind her pulled Melanie's attention around and she twisted about in her seat to face the other girl.

"Oh, um…I don't know. I don't really drink tea all that much. Sorry." She flushed slightly, noticing that everyone's attention was on her now.

"That's okay; that just gives me the opportunity to experiment a little. I'll mix you something I'm sure you'll like, don't worry." Claes proceeded to start pulling various small pouches of ground leaves and herbs, carrying her selections over to the table by the window to work.

"Uh oh Melanie, I'd be careful if I were you," Triela said teasingly, resting her head in one hand, casting a sly look at Claes' back. "It looks like Claes is brewing up another one of her magic potions. If you don't watch yourself, you might end up getting turned into a newt, or something."

"Triela?" Claes asked lightly with over-emphasized sweetness, not turning around to face her room mate. "Are you trying to call me a witch?"

For Triela's part, she pulled back sharply in alarm, eyes bulging, hand flying to her chest in a dramatic show of mock dismay and indignant hurt. "What? A witch? Claes I would _never_ say something like that? How could you even _think_ that?"

"Oh, ok, that's good," Claes replied, still in that overly sweet, seemingly innocent chirp. "Because it's just that, well, we all know what happened the _last_ time you called me a witch, right?"

Triela's mouth fell slightly open at that, a faint flush of colour staining her darkly-tanned cheeks. "Oh, uh…um…yes Claes, we all remember."

Henrietta and Rico burst out giggling at the memory of whatever event had transpired. Melanie was left staring mutely in confusion, completely lost.

"Yeah, that was _really_ funny," Henrietta laughed helplessly, one hand pressed to her mouth to try to stifle the giggles spilling forth. "You're whole mouth was black for almost _two_ weeks!"

"What happened?" Melanie asked, feeling left-out by not knowing what they were talking about. Claes answered her, her voice carrying hints of mildly smug self-satisfaction. "Oh nothing; I just slipped a little "something extra" into Triela's tea a few days later that turned her mouth black, like Henrietta said. Lips, teeth, tongue, everything."

"Yeah, I'll admit that it _was_ kind of funny," Triela said graciously, fighting back giggles of her own. "But I got my revenge later on. Right, Claes?"

A sudden thumping rattle announced Claes' fumbling one of the teapots. Glancing over, Melanie noted that Claes' whole body had gone stiff. She could almost see Claes' braid bristling.

"Yes well, there's no need to bring _that_ up, Triela. It was humiliating enough the _first_ time."

"What did you do?" Melanie asked, perhaps more eagerly than was strictly appropriate. She felt herself slightly caught-up in the moment, feeling as if she were being made privy to intimate secrets only shared among this tight-knit group. She felt like she belonged here, as one of them.

Triela grinned over at her, blue eyes sparkling mischievously. "I had the guys down at Q-Branch mix up something special that…"

"Triela!" Claes cried suddenly, whirling around to glare at her room mate. Claes' whole face and neck were burning bright red. "Don't you _dare_ tell her!"

"What's the matter Claes?" Triela teased, enjoying the sight of the normally controlled and composed girl flustered, her typically cool detachment completely broken. "Turn-about _is_ fair play, after all."

Leaving Claes standing stock-still and burning red in embarrassment, Triela turned her attention back to Melanie, carrying on as if Claes had never interrupted. "I had them mix up some special bath salts that I switched with Claes' normal ones."

"What did they do?" Melanie asked, edging forward onto the edge of her seat in anticipation.

"They stained my entire body blue, is what they did," Claes exclaimed hotly, eyes burning with indignant fury. "From my neck down to my toes."

Henrietta and Rico flew into a flurry of helpless giggling, Henrietta almost slipping off of her seat she was laughing so hard.

"You should have heard Claes' scream when she realized what had happened," Henrietta said once she was able to calm herself down enough to talk. "Marisa swore that she had heard her all the way over by the obstacle course."

"Yes, it was _very_ funny," Claes snapped angrily, spearing Henrietta with a vicious glare that stopped her up short, her giggles dying in her throat. "Except for when the chemicals they used to make the stupid things began to react with my synthetic skin and started _itching_!"

"Oh come on, Claes; I _did_ say I was sorry for that," Triela said pleadingly, trying to placate her friend and clam her down. She had to fight past lingering giggles to do so; much to Claes' consternation. "The Q-Branch crew _swore_ they had no idea the chemicals would react like that."

"I don't care!" Claes retorted hotly. "My _entire_ body itched for three days, Triela; _three_ days! Do you have _any_ idea what that was like? I almost went _insane_! You have _no_ idea how close I came to begging Doctor Bianchi to just rip off all of my skin and replace it."

"Claes, I said I was sorry," Triela said helplessly, looking truly chastised and crestfallen.

"Well you _should_ be! It was absolute _Hell_. And frankly, I think you got off lucky in what I did for payback."

"What?" Triela exclaimed, suddenly growing upset and angry herself. "You _kidnapped_ Sleepy and Caligula and held them for ransom!"

"Well you _deserved_ it! Did I forget to mention how I almost went insane?" Claes shot back venomously.

"There was still no reason to attack two innocent bears, Claes! They never did _anything_ to you!"

"Stop it!" Henrietta shrieked suddenly, hands slamming down on the table, rattling teacups and saucers. Tears were welling up in her eyes and were just beginning to spill down her cheeks. A frantic look of panicked alarm filled her face. "Stop fighting! You're supposed to be best friends and friends don't yell at each other like this!"

Sniffling back tears, Henrietta spoke around her strengthening sobs. "First you start yelling, then you start not liking each other and then you end up hating each other and start trying to beat each other up like Melanie and Nina did. It's not right!"

Everyone stared in mute shock at Henrietta, who sank back down into her seat and began sobbing quietly into her hands.

All of Triela's feelings of anger and resentment bled out of her in a rushing wave. Rushing to her feet, she slipped around the table to stand beside Henrietta. Leaning in close, she slipped her arms around the younger girl's shoulders and hugged her tight. Triela's face bore an expression of abject sorrow and deep contrition. "Oh Henrietta, I'm so sorry. We didn't mean to upset you; right Claes?" She asked, flicking a quick glance over at her room mate, who was looking almost equally as repentant.

Claes nodded her agreement. Hands folded calmly in her lap, her face once again bore its level expression of cool composure. The sudden break in the fight offered by Henrietta's outburst had granted Claes the time needed to reassert her normal control. "Of course not Henrietta. And it's just like you said: Triela and I are best friends. We would not let something as foolish as this ruin our friendship."

Still sniffling quietly, Henrietta peeked out from behind her hands and cast a surreptitious glance over at Claes. "B-but you two were yelling at each other and you were both so angry and…and…"

"Well sure," Triela interrupted smoothly, one hand caressing Henrietta's back in slow, soothing motions. "Even friends get into fights Henrietta. But that doesn't mean we'll start hating each other."

"R…really?"

"Of course," Claes piped up in support.

Reaching up to wipe the tears from her eyes, Henrietta then folded her slim arms across her chest and fixed both Triela and Claes with a firm, determined look. With a grim resolution, she declared emphatically, "Then apologize."

Frowning, Triela cast a confused look over at Claes before turning back to face Henrietta. "But Henrietta, we already apologized for upsetting you."

"Not to _me_; to each other," Henrietta elaborated, drawing looks of dawning comprehension from both girls.

"Oh, right. Duh." Triela blushed faintly in mild embarrassment at having misunderstood her friend, sighing inwardly at her own obliviousness. Shifting her attention back to her room mate, Triela offered the bespectacled girl with an expression of pure shame and contrition. "Claes, I'm sorry. This was stupid; I should never have brought it up in the first place. I know how much it upset you the first time."

For her part, Claes had the grace to return Triela's look of remorseful regret, albeit one that was subdued by her natural emotional restraint and stoic composure. "Well, that's okay Triela. I know you had never intended for all that other…stuff, to happen. And I apologize as well. I should never have lost my temper like that." The last bit was added in almost as an afterthought, the words spilling out in a slightly impatient rush.

Swinging back to meet Henrietta's gaze, Triela offered her a warm, almost motherly smile. "There; better?"

Sniffing back one last, lingering sob, Henrietta returned Triela's smile with a softly beaming grin of her own. "Much better."

Then, in the brief silence that followed, Rico chirped out of nowhere, "Now kiss and make up!"

"Rico!" Claes snapped, spinning on her heel to spear the young blonde with a withering glare of disapproval.

"What?" Rico asked in clear confusion, oblivious to Claes' fierce glower. "It's what they do in the movies."

"Well this isn't a movie, Rico," Triela chided, her voice taking on a slightly lecturing tone. "And besides, one of us would have to be a boy for that to work."

"Really?" Rico asked, bewildered. She cocked her head to one side slightly, brow furrowed in deep consideration. "Are you sure about that Triela?"

"Yes Rico, we're sure," Claes replied, rolling her eyes.

"Oh, okay. Never mind then."

Triela chuckled softly to herself, shaking her head in mute wonder at Rico's irrepressible good-humour. Granted, most of that stalwart resilience of spirit was born from the heaviness of her Conditioning dosage, but still.

Sitting quietly on her chair, seemingly forgotten by all, Melanie made an almost conscious effort to try and shrink away and melt through the floor. She had been left trembling in fearful nervousness by the sudden burst of animosity between Triela and Claes. One simple comment and she had ended up upsetting almost everyone in the room. She felt absolutely miserable.

"I'm…I'm so, so sorry," she mumbled, her face burning with shame as she felt the tears welling up in her eyes. All three girls were staring at her now, adding to her misery and humiliation. "This was all my fault. I should never have butted in, asking about stuff that was none of my business."

"Don't be ridiculous Melanie," Triela said, shaking her head in denial of the other girl's claim to responsibility. "If anyone is to blame, it's me. I brought up the whole conversation in the first place."

"Exactly," Claes quipped, a small, mischievous grin curling the corners of her lips just ever-so-slightly. "This was entirely Triela's fault, not yours."

"Claes!" Henrietta snapped chidingly, throwing her own pouting glare of disapproval.

"That was a joke, Henrietta," Claes sighed, rolling her eyes in exasperation.

"Well it _wasn't_ funny."

"Okay, okay fine," Claes said, backing down. Even she had to admit to herself, the comment_ had_ been in rather poor taste. Undeniably amusing, yet still in poor taste. "It was _both_ of our faults. Triela and I should know better by now than to pick fights with one another. It never ends well."

"Right," Triela agreed, nodding emphatically for added effect. "But why don't we move on to happier topics? Shall we?" There was a resounding chorus of approval from all and Triela straightened up to return to her seat. "By the way Claes, how's Melanie's tea coming?"

Eyes widening slightly, Claes' mouth fell open, evidence that the girl had completely forgotten about the tea that was brewing behind her.

"Oh right, the tea. It should be about finished by now. Hold on." Scrambling around somewhat frantically, Claes poured out a cupful of the steaming hot, red-gold liquid. Setting the cup on a saucer, she carried the mixture over to Melanie. She set it gently down in front of her before hastily returning to her familiar and comfortable position on her own bed.

Picking up the thin porcelain cup carefully in both hands, Melanie raised it to her lips and, taking a quick, tentative sip, felt her eyes widen in wonder as the profusion of flavours blossomed across her tongue. The hot fluid slid down her throat, eliciting a surprised sigh of delight from her.

Blinking dumbly in amazement, Melanie took a second, more eager sip before lowering the cup back down at staring up at Claes. Despite the girl's expression of cool detachment, she could help but show a small amount of slightly nervous expectation.

"Oh wow; this is _really_ good Claes!"

Claes allowed herself a small smile of thanks as relief and satisfaction burgeoned within her. "Why thank you, Melanie. I took a guess that, given the way you tend to guzzle down fruit punch and sports drinks, going with a blend of sweeter, fruity flavours would be a safe bet."

Melanie's jaw dropped, her gaze fixing in an incredulous stare. Sudden indignation flashed through her and she snapped at the other girl hotly. "What do you mean "guzzle?" I do not guzzle my drinks. Do I?"

"Um, yeah Melanie, I'm afraid you kind of do," Triela said gently, offering her an apologetic look. "But I wouldn't worry about it. It's not like you're the only one. I mean, have you ever seen the way Allison sucks back coffee? It's almost scary."

Claes piped up then, offering her own words of commiseration and reassurances. "And you should see the way Marisa can tackle a plate of food; especially right after she gets back from a mission. The term "vacuum cleaner" inevitably comes to mind."

"Yeah," Henrietta said, giggling. "One time, Marisa ate _two whole_ pizzas. By _herself_! And then she asked what was for dessert?"

Also giggling to herself, Rico added in as well, "Oh, and one time, we snuck into the kitchen and stole six gallons of ice cream and Marisa ended up eating over half of it!"

"And one other time…" Henrietta began, but was interrupted sharply by Triela, who stepped in forcefully on behalf of the exuberant red-head.

"Okay, okay, that's enough you two. I think Melanie gets the idea, so why don't we stop picking on poor Marisa, alright? Especially since she isn't actually here to be able to defend herself."

"Yes, and she's hardly the only one capable of being described as a vacuum cleaner," Claes added in admonishment. "I seem to recall times when you have _both_ suffered a distinct lack of decorum while eating."

"That's a lie Claes!" Henrietta cried, shooting up to her feet, face scrunched up in an angry pout. "I would _never_ stuff my face like that. It's gross and just not lady-like and Guise would be _very_ upset with me if I _ever_ did anything like that!"

"Maybe not during an actual meal, you haven't," Claes conceded graciously, but not quite willing to let the girl off the hook so easily. "But what about a bag of sweets? We all know just how short of a lifespan candy has when it's around you, Henrietta."

Her soft, pale, heart-shaped face turning crimson, Henrietta abruptly plunked herself back down in her chair and stared fixatedly into her teacup. "Well, that…that's different."

"I'm sure it is Henrietta," Claes replied with a faint smirk. Leaning forward, she twisted herself around slightly to stare intently at Rico, who stared back innocently. "And what about you, Rico? Any excuses?"

"Nope, not really," the girl chirped brightly. "I know I can be a pig at times."

Triela burst out laughing at the candid admission, unable to help herself as deep racking chuckles forced her to have to clutch at her sides. "Well at least _someone_ around here is honest."

Struggling to compose herself, Triela cleared her throat loudly, determinedly fixing her attention back on Melanie, who had been calmly sipping at her tea during the exchange, content to simply sit back and observe the more light-hearted banter between the friends.

"Anyway," Triela began, drawing all attention to her. "Moving on, how has your first week been Melanie?"

Her mood suddenly souring slightly, Melanie felt her lips curling in distaste and set her cup down with a sharp clatter. "Oh well, you know; aside from the fact that I keep screwing up during training, can barely manage to do anything right and Jacob probably hates me, then it's just been great."

"That's ridiculous Melanie, I'm certain that your handler doesn't hate you," Claes replied in mild rebuke.

"Yeah well, he certainly doesn't _like_ me very much, then, that's for sure," Melanie shot back glumly.

"He just doesn't know you very well yet, is all," Triela reassured her, reaching out to gently grip one of Melanie's hands and give it a comforting squeeze. "Be patient. It takes some handlers longer than others to get used to their cyborgs."

"Well, I guess," Melanie mumbled, reluctantly accepting their words of support.

Several moments of silence followed in which all five gathered girls sipped quietly at their tea. An awkward tension began to build within the room, with no-one willing to be one to break it.

Finally, feeling the need to divert attention and perhaps change the direction of everyone's minds, Claes spoke up. "Henrietta mentioned that she ran into you in the hospital wing. Was your fight with Nina that bad?"

"Oh no, I wasn't in the hospital for that," Melanie exclaimed, shaking her head. "I mean, well, yes, I _was_ in there for that, but that was much earlier." Melanie fumbled around awkwardly in an effort to try and explain the situation. "When Henrietta and I ran into each other, I was just in for some tests to see why my handgun proficiency is so bad."

"I see," Claes said, nodding in understanding. "So were they able to…"

"Oh yeah, that reminds me," Melanie said, cutting off Claes in mid-sentence. "Thanks again for stepping in when you did Triela. I know you said you should never have had to in the first place, but still, thanks."

Laughing, Triela shook her head, waving off the other girl's thanks. "Don't mention it, Melanie. It was nothing, really. It's kind of my job to keep the peace around here anyway."

"It is?" Melanie asked, slightly astonished at this new revelation.

"Not officially, of course," Claes explained. "But Triela _is_ the oldest and most senior cyborg in the agency."

"Yeah, that means I'm sort of responsible for looking after all of my little sisters. Not that I'm complaining, or anything," Triela hastened to add; lest Melanie get the impression that she resented her position, which she didn't. "I like being everyone's big sister. It's kind of nice having people rely on me for stuff that doesn't really have anything to do with, you know, the job."

"Plus she gets to boss people around all of the time," Rico added in cheerfully, earning heartfelt laughter from Melanie and Henrietta. Even Claes allowed her composure to slip enough to let out a few quiet chuckles.

"Hey! I do _not_ boss people around; you take that back, Rico!" Triela snapped hotly, not even remotely as amused by the jibe as everyone else seemed to be.

"See what I mean?" Rico said, laughing.

Realizing that she had just planted her foot squarely in her mouth, Triela sullenly eased herself back into her seat, glowering silently into her teacup, face heating slightly. A gesture that was met by a renewed wave of giggling laughter.

"As I was about to say earlier," Claes stated, once everyone had calmed down from their respective giggling fits. "Melanie, was Doctor Bianchi able to find any answers about your proficiency issues?"

"Sort of," Melanie replied, wrapping her hands loosely around her half empty cup. "Jacob said he thinks it might have something to do with buried memories left over from my past life. Memories that weren't erased during my conversion."

"Is there anything they can do to help you?" Henrietta asked, her sweet doll's face creased with concern.

"Not really. Jacob said that it's a mental problem, so no amount of training will fix it. And since it's a subconscious memory already buried in my mind, reconditioning won't help either."

"Wow; that really sucks Melanie. I'm sorry," Triela said sympathetically, also gazing at her with honest, open concern.

"Why don't you just use a shotgun, like Triela does?" Rico asked suddenly, surprising everyone.

Triela glanced over at her, one slim eyebrow arched quizzically. "What are you talking about, Rico?"

"Uh, a shotgun?" Rico replied, confused, as if it were the clearest thing in the world to understand and she just couldn't figure out why everyone else wasn't getting it. "If Melanie's problem is that she can't aim, then she can use a shotgun. It's not like you really need to aim with one of those. Just point it in the right direction and _blam_!" She pantomimed firing off a shotgun shell as she spoke, flinging herself backwards onto the mattress from the imagined recoil for added effect.

"Hey that's not actually a bad idea," Triela said, giving the matter some serious, critical thought.

"You really think so?" Rico replied, sitting back up. It was an unfamiliar sensation for the girl: people actually taking what she had to say seriously. Rico tried to offer serious input during conversations, but somewhere between the thought forming in her head and it leaving her mouth, things just sort of tended to…wander. She didn't really mind all that much though, she just enjoyed being able to sit and listen and be a part of the fun. But it was certainly nice to be appreciated too.

"Absolutely Rico," Claes answered, adding to Rico's suddenly growing feeling of pride. "The only problem is that she wouldn't be able to use it in any kind of hostage situation. I may not participate in actual combat missions but I'm fairly certain that the government still looks poorly upon unnecessary civilian casualties."

"Yeah, that would be a problem," Triela commented, still carefully considering the notion. "You could maybe try using deer slugs instead, but that might bring you right back to the problem of you not being able to aim properly."

Melanie shrugged dismissively, more pleased with the fact that they were all so readily willing to offer their emphatic and serious support in helping her, rather than their actually coming up with a solution. "Well, I'm sure I'll think of something. But thanks for trying to help. I really appreciate it."

"Of course Melanie; I keep trying to tell you: we're all a team here, remember?" Triela sat back then, taking a long, slow sip of her tea before continuing. "But enough talking about work. It occurs to me that poor Melanie here hasn't yet had a single piece of cake and I think we need to fix that. Henrietta?"

Nodding in happy agreement, Henrietta rose, striding over to the end table. She removed a fancifully decorated porcelain cover that Melanie hadn't taken note of before and set it gently aside. Inside, set on a broad cake plate of frosted glass was a thin, double-layer cake coated with vanilla frosting. The sides were sprinkled heavily with shaved coconut and topped by sliced wedges of fresh strawberries.

Cutting off a slice, Henrietta set the piece of cake on a plate and passed it over to Melanie, who accepted it with mumbled words of thanks, before resuming her seat.

"Okay," Triela said, clapping her hands together lightly once everyone was settled. "I hereby declare this a "no-work" zone. The only topics of conversation permitted are gossip of the most idle sort. Understood?"

Everyone voiced their emphatic agreement, and the talk continued, now much more relaxed and light-hearted. Melanie sat silently, eyes swivelling between each girl in turn, picking slowly and delicately at her cake. She felt a renewed surge of happiness and contentment growing within her as she soaked in the friendly banter.

They had accepted her. Regardless of her faults and failings, these four had opened their arms and welcomed her; were willing to go out of their way to help and support her. She was one of them. Fully and truly now, she was a member of the team.

* * *

Jacob sat slumped heavily in the chair, his head feeling as if it had been packed with cotton. The room around him lurched and spun slightly in his vision and he reached up with one hand to rub at his eyes. The effort required several attempts and he fumbled around his face for a few moments before successfully locating his eyes.

Continuing the motion after several seconds, Jacob rubbed his hand back, through his hair, pausing to scratch at the back of his head. He then let the hand flop back into his lap, wearied by the physical strain the movement had required.

Seated across from him in the lightly furnish, dark-panelled room, Marco chuckled softly to himself at the sight. He lifted his thick glass tumbler to his lips and took a slow, deep sip of the sharply burning, acidic liquid within.

"Having some trouble there, Jacob?" the man teased, smirking at Jacob's fierce, bleary-eyes glare.

"Kiss my ass, Tongi," Jacob bit back.

Reaching out, he grasped the wide, squat bottle of blended whisky and poured out a generous amount into his own tumbler. The neck of the bottle clanked and rattled unsteadily against the rim of the glass and several dollops of the amber liquid slopped over, onto the tabletop.

"Hey, be careful with that stuff, Jacob; I paid a whole ten Euros for that bottle," Marco exclaimed with mock concern, spoiling the chastisement by busting out into snickering chuckles halfway through.

"Then you were ripped off, my friend," Jacob declared in a rough grumble. "This swill is hardly worth five."

"Maybe, but it still seems to be getting the job done nonetheless. But I believe you were saying something about how your first week has been?"

"It's been _Hell_ Marco," Jacob growled, bringing his glass to his lips and swigging down half its contents in a single gulp. "I don't know how much longer I can keep doing this, to be honest."

Marco shrugged offhandedly, taking another sip from his glass. "You were out of the game for a while Jacob; it's no surprise that you're taking a while to get used to things again. But you will."

"I don't know Marco," Jacob replied, his voice burdened with a bone-weary exhaustion that he just couldn't seem to shake, no matter how hard he tried. "I really don't think I'm cut out for this any more. I can barely stand to look at Melanie. Every time I do all I can see is Sophia, lying on the ground with her damned throat shredded open, soaked in blood."

Marco gazed solemnly over at his friend, feeling sudden pangs of sympathetic pain. He could well relate to how Jacob felt. "I know what you mean. Right after Angelica died, I was the same way. I couldn't stand to be around any of the other girls. Just looking at them reminded me of what had happened and that they would all eventually share her fate.

"It's not easy but you_ do_ eventually get over it. Not completely, of course. That kind of loss never really goes away, but it does get easier."

Jacob stared across at Marco for several long, silent moments and then promptly burst out into harsh, barking laughter. Leaning back to stare up at the plaster ceiling, he shook his head sadly. "No offense Marco, but maybe when you're on your _third_ kid, I'll be willing to take you a bit more seriously.

"Angelica was near the end of her lifespan when she died. Zach and Sophia weren't. You knew she wouldn't last more than a few more months and at least _you_ had the comfort of knowing that she died saving your life. Sophia's death was completely pointless. It should never have happened in the first place."

A little light blinked on inside Marco's head, suddenly realizing the source of Jacob's lingering bitterness and seething hostility. He obviously still blamed himself for her death. "It wasn't your fault Jacob. There was nothing you could have done to prevent that shot from hitting her."

Marco jumped slightly as Jacob's hand came slamming down in the table, whisky spilling out across his hand and the table. There was an audible crack as the tumbler impacted the table, hairline fractures spider-webbing through the cheap, laminated wood.

"The Hell it wasn't my fault!" Jacob barked savagely, eyes wild with an enraged intensity that took Marco aback. "I should have spotted that second gunman, Marco. He was standing right there and if I had actually taken the time to open my fucking eyes and _look_ I would have noticed him. But I only saw what _I_ wanted to see and because of that mistake, Sophia's dead. She paid the price for my incompetence."

Realizing that sympathy and pity were liable to only anger the other man more, Marco decided to switch tactics and try a different approach. "Okay fine; maybe you're right Jacob: maybe it _was_ your fault. But sitting here bitching about that fact isn't going to fix anything.

"Everyone makes mistakes Jacob. We're human; we can't avoid that fact. But the point is to try and learn from those mistakes. We pick ourselves back up and try to do better the next time." With a small amount of anxiety, Marco studied his friend's face critically, searching for some sign that he'd gotten through to the man.

Much to his relief, Jacob's face softened and he even managed to let out a few brief chuckles of almost genuine mirth. "Funny; I said almost the same thing to Melanie this afternoon."

"Sounds like some good advice then," Marco replied, smiling wryly.

Reaching for the bottle of whisky, Marco refilled both of their glasses, pouring out a liberal amount for each of them. He sat back and sipped contentedly for a time, the silence stretching out between them.

Eventually, however, Marco felt the niggling need to confess something to the other man. It was a decision that he had been wrestling with for some time now. "I've been thinking about rejoining Section Two as an active handler."

Sitting frozen in his seat by the admission, Jacob was dimly aware that his mouth had fallen open and that he was gaping dumbly at Marco. It took him several tries before he was able to successfully work enough moisture back into his mouth to be able to talk. "You want to run that by me again?"

"I said I'm thinking about becoming an active handler again."

Shocked, confused and angry by this sudden revelation, Jacob demanded hotly: "What the Hell for? You're out of the game Marco, why would you want to put yourself through this shit all over again?"

Marco sighed, settling down his glass to fix his friend with a calm, level gaze. "I told you that we can't avoid making mistakes in our life. Well I want the opportunity to make up for some of mine.

"Regardless of the circumstances surrounding Sophia's death, one thing that can be said is that, when she died, she died knowing that you cared about her. Angelica never had that same comfort. I almost completely shut her out during those last few months. It's something that I spend every single day regretting and I want the chance to make up for that."

"Oh well isn't that generous of you?" Jacob snapped crossly, flinging his hands up into the air expressively. "It is _so_ good to know that you're willing to take some other poor girl who's already been brutally traumatised by the natural events of her life and subject her to the inevitably slow, deteriorating death that this Hell-hole has to offer. All in an effort to ease your own guilt over having treated Angie like shit before she died. How truly noble of you."

Eyes narrowing angrily, Marco just barely managed to bite back a fierce retort. Sucking in a deep, calming breath that hissed though tightly clenched teeth, Marco waited a moment before responding to ensure that he would be able to retain his composure.

"Well if that's the way you feel about what we're doing here, then why did you even bother coming back at all?"

"Why did I come back? You make it sound like I actually had a choice in the matter Marco," Jacob said, laughing bitterly with grim, derisive amusement. "You seem to have forgotten the fact that I'm not exactly from around here. I'm a foreign national who's had access to some of the government's deepest secrets. You honestly think they'll just let me go on my merry way if I decide to walk?"

"And what makes you think it would be any different for me if I were to decide to leave the agency?"

Jacob scoffed at the other man's argument, sneering contemptuously into his glass. "It _is_ different for you Marco. You've been with the agency almost from the very beginning. You're the original handler. With everything you've done for this place in helping to get it up off the ground, is it any surprise that you might have a lot more freedom to choose what you want to do with the rest of your life?"

"Okay fine, you may be right about that. But you're wrong about the girls' deaths being inevitable."

"What are you talking about?" Jacob asked sceptically, suddenly wondering which of the two of them was the drunker. "Has there been some miracle breakthrough in Conditioning technology in the last three hours that I haven't heard about?"

"Of course not," Marco snapped, growing more than slightly annoyed and angered by Jacob's continually flippant and mocking attitude. "But if you remember Jacob, seven years ago when Angelica was built, every single member of the medical staff was certain that the first generation cyborgs would last five years at the most.

"Angelica was almost six years old before she died and even then, her death was as a result of the injuries she sustained while shielding me from that bomb blast. Triela has been with the agency for just over six years now and she could last another year before she finally deteriorates.

"With the start of the Series Two program, we now have cyborgs whose life spans are over tens years long."

"What's your point?" Jacob snapped impatiently.

"My point, Jacob, is that the technology behind the cyborgs is always advancing. Granted, it might be too late for Triela and the other first generation girls, but who knows where we'll be in another five or six years? For all we know, we might have solved the problems and limitations with the Conditioning meds. We might even be able to retro-fit the newer technology onto the older girls to extend their life spans.

"I have to believe that there is still some hope for them. Otherwise, I don't think I could keep going."

"Well, if you believe that, then you're either a naïve fool, or just a complete idiot," Jacob snapped bitterly while staring down into his whisky, scarred, weather-beaten hands wrapped tightly about the thick glass.

"Fine, then I'm a naïve moron; I don't care. It's still better than being an embittered, cynical jack-ass, as far as I'm concerned."

Pausing for a moment, Jacob silently mulled over the other man's assertions. Perhaps it was a result of all the cheap whisky in his system, but for some reason Jacob just couldn't shake the feeling that maybe Marco had a point. It was just so damned hard. With everything they had to face on a daily basis, Jacob just couldn't see such a future being possible.

"I hope you're right Marco," Jacob conceded finally, once again settling into a kind of bone-weary despondency. "I really do. God knows, we _all_ deserve the chance to escape from this shitty life."

"I'll drink to that," Marco stated, lifting his glass up before him. After a time, Jacob returned the gesture, grinning thinly with the first signs of good-humour.

Clinking their glasses together, Marco exclaimed with mock grandiose enthusiasm, "A toast: to the future."

"To the future," Jacob agreed. Tipping back their glasses, both men drained the remaining contents in swift, gulping swallows. Setting the glasses back down in the table with dull _thumps_, they sat back to enjoy the rapidly spreading warmth and numbness of inebriation.

"Well, as fun as this has been, it's getting late," Jacob started after several minutes of easy silence had passed between the pair. "I've got an early day tomorrow and it takes all of my concentration just to deal with Melanie's crap. Although hopefully, after today, she'll finally start to smarten up."

"Try to go easy on her Jacob," Marco advised, watching as his friend rose from the padded chair, the stiff dark leather creaking and groaning. "From what I've seen and heard of her, she really is busting her ass trying to meet your approval."

Jacob paused with his hand on the door, half-turning back toward Marco. "I'm not the one she needs to impress, Marco; Jean is. She can bust her ass all she wants, but if she can't pass the combat exam, then it doesn't really matter, now does it?"

"I suppose not," Marco admitted sadly. "Well anyway, I'll see you in the morning."

Jacob nodded in agreement, bidding his friend a good night before slipping from the room. He made his way down the corridor, weaving slightly as the world seemed to spin around drunkenly.

He wasn't even remotely as intoxicated as he had been several weeks ago, when Marco had showed up at that bar and dragged him back. As such, Jacob was able, though just barely, to fight down the mild nausea churning in his stomach and stumble forward in a relatively straight line.

Arriving at his own suite, Jacob fumbled around in his pocket for the key, managing to get it inserted and turned after only a half-dozen awkward attempts. Swinging open the door, he stood in the open portal, wobbling unsteadily.

With one foot over the threshold he stopped, frozen with sudden indecision. Again Jacob had to concede the fact that maybe Marco had had a point with his last statement. Regardless of his own misgivings and frustrations, it was undeniable that Melanie _had_ been throwing everything into her training the last couple of days. The furious determination she'd shown earlier in the afternoon while running those forty-five laps _had_ impressed him. The fire raging in her eyes as she struggled to complete the run had burned with an intensity Jacob had never before witnessed.

Later on in the day, when he was running her through basic self-defence drills in the gym, Melanie had again thrown everything she had into memorizing the moves and repeating them over and over and over until they were firmly engrained in her memory. She had left herself completely and utterly exhausted. Bruises had bared her face, arms and legs and sweat had been dripping off of her body in steady streams. Even after all of that, she was still able to maintain the strength and composure to complete her five laps of the compound before slinking off to her room.

Jacob felt a pang of guilt worm its way through his insides. Perhaps Marco was right and Melanie _was_ deserving of a little bit of slack. As much as he tried to keep his distance and shut her out, he couldn't help but feel bad about the way he had been treating her.

Suddenly making up his mind, Jacob pulled back, closing and relocking the door to his room. With a firm, determined stride only marginally marred by his drunken wobble, he made his way towards the cyborg dormitories, intent on offering sincere apologies to Melanie.

Stumbling slightly up the stairs leading to the second floor of the dormitory dedicated to the Generation Two girls, Jacob made his way down the hall until he was in front of the room Melanie shared with Lucretia.

Reaching out, he rapped his knuckles against the heavy wood, knocking three or four times before letting his hand fall back down to his side. Waiting several moments, Jacob heard no sound from within. He knocked a second time and again got no response.

"Jack-ass, she's probably asleep by now," Jacob muttered to himself. Undeterred, his inebriation pushing him doggedly onward to deliver his message of heartfelt sorrow and regret to his girl, he grabbed the handle and pushed open the door.

Blinking in the sudden harsh glare of Lucretia's computer screen illuminating the otherwise shadow-darkened room, Jacob stood frozen just inside the door, waiting for his eyes to adjust.

Hearing a soft, girlish snore coming from the vicinity of the desk, Jacob made his way over to the far end of the room. Glancing down, he found Lucretia passed out in her seat. Her head was resting on one arm that was draped haphazardly across a textbook. Her other arm dangled limply at her side. A tiny line of spittle was leaking from the corner of her mouth and slowly trailing down the sleeve of the dark blue pyjamas she wore to soak into the paper of the book.

Shaking his head in exasperated wonder, Jacob swung around to regard Melanie, who was curled up in bed, the covers drawn up, completely enshrouding her within. He chuckled softly to himself at the sight of her. In his mind, Jacob flashed back to memories of Sophia and the times she would curl up next to him, nestling her head in his lap while she napped peacefully after a particularly exhausting mission. No matter how tired, upset or sore she was, there would always be the sweetest smile curling her lips as she slept. And no matter how tired, upset or sore Jacob himself was, having her there, his hand slowly stroking her soft brown hair had soothed him. Made him feel happy and content.

Jacob still burned inside with anguish over Sophia's death, but gazing down at Melanie's sleeping form stirred those same feelings within him.

"Melanie, I need to talk to you," he whispered, careful not to disturb her sleeping room mate. There was no response from the girl. He repeated himself, slightly louder and more insistent. Again no response.

Frowning, the need to get the weight bearing down on him off of his chest, Jacob reached out tentatively to gently shake Melanie awake. His hand settled on her shoulder and promptly sank down into something soft and pliant. Puzzled, Jacob pressed down harder, his hand sinking down still further. Sudden alarm tingling up his spine, Jacob felt an awakening realization bloom within his mind. In the wake of that realization came a growing anger.

"What the Hell?" he muttered darkly. Reaching up to grasp the edge of the thick blankets, Jacob whipped them down with a forceful flick of his arm, revealing the neatly arrayed stack of pillows beneath.

"That little _bitch,_" Jacob growled furiously. Straightening, his entire body vibrating with repressed rage, Jacob swung around and delivered a swift kick to the edge of the office chair, sending it and the girl it held spinning and crashing into Lucretia's bed.

Snapping awake with panicked alarm, Lucretia cried out, her body jerking upright. Already unsteady from Jacob's kick, the chair flipped backwards, spilling the poor girl heavily to the floor.

Blinking dazedly, the fog of sleep still gripped tightly around her mind, Lucretia stared about the room in confusion, not understanding what had happened.

"Where the Hell is she?" someone barked loudly, directly above her. Lucretia winced at the sudden harsh noise, slapping her hands to her ears and shrinking back slightly.

"Where the Hell is she Lucretia?" Again the voice roared through her head and she hesitantly looked up to find the source of the voice looming over her, face darkened in rage.

Recognizing Melanie's handler Jacob, Lucretia felt all of the blood drain from her face and her heart leapt forcefully into her throat in sudden panic. Her eyes bulged wide and her mouth dropped open. She tried to talk; to say something, anything in a desperate effort to offer up some kind of explanation, but her throat had constricted tightly, choking off any and all words.

"Never mind; I know _exactly_ where she is," Jacob spat viciously, his lips curled into a savage, rictus snarl.

Watching in growing horror as Jacob stepped over her prone body and headed back towards the door, Lucretia desperately scrambled to her feet, trying to chase after the infuriated man. "Oh my God, Jacob wait, I…I can explain," she gasped, finally finding her voice.

Completely ignoring her, Jacob strode from the room, hand whipping out to grasp the door and fling it shut.

Yelping in sudden alarm, Lucretia tried to pull up short as the door slammed shut with a resounding _bang_. Unfortunately, the fuzzy pink toe-socks she wore slid along the slick hardwood floor and she quickly found that she was too close to stop in time. Another resounding_ bang_ echoed through the air as Lucretia crashed into the door, bouncing back and landing heavily on her back. Bright lights suddenly exploded in her vision as her head rebounded forcefully of the floor, leaving Lucretia dazed.

Shaking off her dizziness, Lucretia climbed unsteadily to her feet and dashed out into the hallway. Too late though, as Jacob was already gone.

"Oh God, I cannot _believe_ this!" she exclaimed, hands raking back through her hair. Lucretia felt her heart jack-hammering within her chest and she had to swallow reflexively against a rising tide of anxiety-born nausea. "I am so, so, _so_, dead. Melanie is going to _kill_ me!"

* * *

Seething inside, Jacob marched through the halls of the dormitory, his feet carrying him swiftly and instinctually towards his goal. To think: he'd _actually_ started feeling sorry for her! Well, that would teach _him_ to let his guard down.

Finding himself abruptly stopped in front of the door to Triela and Claes' room, Jacob paused to momentarily collect himself. Inside, he could hear the muffled sounds of high-pitched, girlish giggling and chatter.

Taking a firm rein on his anger, Jacob twisted the polished brass handle and threw the door open. The heavy wood banged back on its hinges, bouncing off to swing slowly backward.

Standing silhouetted in the open doorway, Jacob stared critically at the small group of girls arrayed before him. They all stared over at him in stunned alarm, looking for all the world like a pack of young children caught stealing cookies.

"J…Jacob?" Melanie stammered, her voice trembling with confused horror at the sight of her enraged handler. Her hands had frozen in place at his sudden and violent appearance, leaving a forkful of cake hanging halfway to her mouth.

Sparing a quick glance over to Henrietta and Rico, Jacob barked out sharp, savage orders to the pair. "You two go to bed, now!" He stepped aside deftly as they scrambled up frantically and rushed out of the room. He then turned his attention back to his own girl.

"Mr. Mehrandish, I can explain this," Triela explained, standing up slowly and carefully, as one would when faced by a wild animal.

"Shut up," Jacob snapped viciously, drawing a noticeable wince from the slim blonde. His eyes never left Melanie's panicked, fear-stricken face. "You. Outside. Now."

Trembling from head to toe, Melanie set down her fork and rose to her feet. Her legs wobbled, almost threatening to deposit her onto the floor at any moment. She stared meekly at the floor as she slipped by Jacob, whole glare followed her as she stepped out, into the hall.

She cringed as Jacob slammed the door shut behind him and gulped nervously. She clutched nervously at the hem of her top, twisting the material back and forth in her hands. She could feel Jacob's eyes boring into her skull, but couldn't make herself lift her head enough to look at him.

"Walk," he snapped simply. She instantly leapt to comply, lithe legs flashing as she scrambled forward, towards the stairs. With growing anxiety and trepidation she waited for the inevitable explosion of anger. Each moment that went by without Jacob yelling at her only added to Melanie's nervousness. Damn it, she had _known_ this was a bad idea! But she had allowed herself to be talked into it anyway.

"First thing in the morning you're going to run forty-five laps of the track," he said in a deep, menacingly growl.

"Yes sir," she replied meekly, head downcast, eyes fixed on the floor.

"And you'll be adding an extra _twenty_ pounds to the ten you earned for smart-mouthing me earlier in the engineering wing, understood?"

"Yes sir."

"Good." He jabbed one thick finger into the center of her chest then, stopping her in her tracks. "Now maybe you can explain to me what part of my orders that you not attend this little tea part you misunderstood."

"Um, well…I…" she stammered, eyes darting, trying desperately to come up with some suitable explanation.

"I'm waiting," Jacob growled after a time when she wasn't immediately forthcoming. Then, before she had a chance to say anything, "You know what Melanie, don't. I couldn't care less about whatever excuse you pull out of your ass; I don't want to hear it."

He frowned, glancing away from her as he folded his arms across his broad chest. "I'm beginning to reconsider my opinion on you being retarded."

"That's not fair," Melanie said quietly, her lower lip quivering.

"You disobeyed a direct order, Melanie!" Jacob snarled, fighting to keep the volume of his voice under control. "After I expressly forbade you to go to that get-together, you decided to ignore me and go anyway."

"No you didn't," she snapped softly, half under her breath.

"What was that?" Jacob demanded angrily.

Melanie sucked in a deep, steadying breath and, gathering her courage, pressed on. She'd opened her mouth and now was committed to her course. "I said, you didn't actually forbid me from going."

Jacob gaped at her a moment, unable to comprehend what she was saying, or if he was hearing her correctly. Was she actually contradicting him? Knuckles cracking as his hands balled into tight fists at his sides, Jacob managed to work out only two words in a low, sinister hiss of broiling anger. "Excuse me?"

Knowing she only had a few second before Jacob completely flipped out on her, Melanie hurried went on, determinedly explaining her position. "You only said that I _shouldn't_ go, because I'd be too tired in the morning."

"Oh I see," Jacob said, voice dripping with over exaggerated sarcastic sweetness. "So _that's_ the game you want to play. Okay Melanie, fine. You think you can trounce around the agency at all hours of the night and play the little party-girl and still maintain your normal training schedule, then be my guest."

Thrown completely off balance by this change in attitude and approach from her handler, Melanie was left uncertain of what to say or do in response. Unfortunately, Jacob robbed her of any opportunity to respond as he immediately set off once again, heading for her and Lucretia's room.

"Come on," he snapped, he usually animosity reasserting itself and pulling her into motion. Within moments they had reached her room. She saw Lucretia's head snap up as Jacob pushed open the door and waved her in.

"Melanie, I'm so sorry, I don't know what happened, I…"

"You shut your mouth," Jacob said forcefully, freezing the words in her mouth and making her eyes pop fearfully.

"Get dressed," Jacob ordered Melanie, stepping back out of the room. Not knowing what he had in mind, Melanie could only comply mutely. He shut the door behind her and she immediately went about changing out of her pyjamas and back into normal clothes.

"Melanie, I'm so sorry," Lucretia began again, once Jacob had left. "I swear, I don't know what happened. One minute I'm doing homework and the next, I'm splayed out on the floor and Jacob's freaking out at me."

Melanie remained silent, refusing to look at her room mate. Feelings of anger and betrayal burned inside of her and she didn't trust herself to open her mouth to respond. She had trusted Lucretia to watch her back and had been betrayed. She was supposed to be her best friend!

Pleading piteously, tears in her eyes, Lucretia stepped forward and placed one slim hand on Melanie's shoulder. "Melanie please, I'm sorry." The other girl immediately and forcefully shrugged off the hand, stepping away from the sudden and unwanted contact.

Abject misery and shame washing through her, Lucretia whimpered softly, feeling the tears starting to slide down her face. "Melanie? Please, talk to me."

"I've got nothing to say," Melanie snapped, now fully dressed. Still refusing to meet her room mate's eyes, Melanie stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind her. Lucretia was left standing in the middle of the room, tears coursing down her cheeks, shoulders trembling as silent sobs wracked her slim form.

Out in the hall, Jacob marched her down towards the main sections of the agency compound. Before long, they could start to make out the low, steady hum of vacuum cleaners, interspersed with the quiet chatter of the cleaning crew as they went about their nocturnal schedules of keeping the buildings clean and tidy.

Jacob walked up to one group, who broke off their conversation as the pair came into view.

"Good evening," Jacob said flatly, addressing one short, portly woman in her middle years who seemed to be directing the others in their tasks. An old white kerchief was wrapped around her head to keep stray locks of iron-gray hair out of her face. "Melanie here has come to the conclusion that she does not require sleep as the rest of us do. As such, I've decided that all of the extra time she suddenly has on her hands should be put to some productive use.

"I would like to offer you her services in helping you work. I want her kept as busy as possible all night long. Just try to have her back before four-thirty, since that's when her morning training starts."

The woman stared up at Jacob, uncertain of what to do. She had never heard of a cyborg, and that _had_ to be what the young girl staring at the floor behind him was, being tasked with helping out the cleaning staff. Regardless of whatever she had obviously done to earn punishment, the needs of their training _always_ took precedence.

But, not willing to speak out against the orders of one of the agency's handlers, she simply nodded silently, accepting his wishes that she be given over to help.

Jacob spun around to glare down at Melanie. "I'll see you in the morning," was all he said, before stalking off, leaving her alone with the group of custodians.

The trio of women and the lone man ushered her over and, speaking with sympathetic kindness, gave her instructions on what she could do to help out. She listened silently, absorbing as much as she could while her mind roiled with a tangled stream of thoughts and bitter regrets. She should have just kept her damned mouth shut and accepted the chewing out.

Ten minutes later, Melanie found herself pushing a damp, heavy mop back and forth across the tiled floor of one of the public bathroom. Squinting slightly in the harsh florescent light, she paused in her work to arch her stiff back in a vain attempt to work out some of the aching pains that were settling deeply into the synthetic muscle tissue.

_Well __Claes,_ Melanie mused to herself. _He certainly hates me_ now_!_


	6. Chapter 05: What Lurks Within

Chapter 05: What Lurks Within

The following morning, Melanie staggered unsteadily through the halls towards the cafeteria. Her awkward, shambling gait was reminiscent of something straight out of a zombie apocalypse movie. Her bleary, bloodshot eyes, as well as the dry, rasping groan that occasionally slipped past her lips only added to the imagery. More than one girl eyed her askance as they slipped by her.

Entering the dining hall, the almost oppressive, echoing din caused Melanie to stop in her tracks. Cringing, she pressed hands raw and wrinkled from hours spent washing, mopping and scrubbing to her head. The noise sent spears of pain lancing through her skull and for a time it was nearly more than she could handle to simply remain upright. The fact that every synthetic muscle fibre in her whole body felt as if it had the consistency of half-congealed jelly certainly did not help matters.

If not for Mrs. Demachi's taking pity on her and sending her to bed around two in the morning, Melanie was positive that she would not have survived the morning's fifteen mile rucksack march. As it was, she was still more than slightly amazed at just how much difference those thirty extra pounds had made.

Through the large, full-length windows, Melanie could see the thick layer of clouds from the day before still blocking out the sky all across the horizon. While it wasn't raining at the moment, the slowly churning clouds promised that it would be days before anyone would see the sun again. The muted sunlight that did manage to filter through gave everything outside a dull, washed-out appearance. A stiff wind that was silenced by the thick glass panes danced through the bare branches of the trees and shrubs.

Dragging herself over to the array of drink dispensers, Melanie grabbed a large ceramic mug. Setting the cup under the spout of the dispenser labelled 'coffee', she jammed her finger into the button that sent scalding hot, silky black fluid pouring down.

Picking up her filled mug, Melanie sipped experimentally, her face instantly wrinkling in disgust as the sharp, bitter taste assaulted her palate. _My God, how does Allison drink this stuff?_ Melanie wondered to herself.

Reaching over, she blindly grabbed a fistful of sweetener packets. Tearing them open one by one, she upended nearly a dozen into her mug before contemplating a second attempt. She was about to raise the cup to her lips when a strangled, panicked shout from behind made her pause. Turning, she saw Allison scrambling towards her, a look of unbridled terror on her face.

"For the love of God Melanie, stop!" the brunette exclaimed desperately, reaching towards Melanie with one out flung hand.

A sudden pang of nervous alertness surged through Melanie, shoving aside all thoughts and feelings of exhaustion. Adrenaline roared through her bloodstream and her pulse and respiration leapt to accommodate her heightened physical state. All of Melanie's senses sharpened to whatever hidden threat was lurking in the shadows.

Skidding to a stop beside her, Allison snapped her hand forward, fingers locking around Melanie's still upraised wrist. With gentle, almost delicate pressure, Allison forced that hand down, away from Melanie's mouth until the cup was once again resting on the counter top.

Her breath coming in deep, ragged gasps, Allison stood there for several seconds, before panting out, "Please Melanie, for the sake of my sanity, don't you _dare_ drink that."

"What are you talking about?" Melanie asked, confused. Her every nerve-ending on edge, Melanie flicked her gaze wildly around the room, searching for the threat implied by Allison's frantic tone. "What's going on?"

"What's going on is you were about to poison yourself, Melanie," Allison explained, forcefully extracting the mug from Melanie's tightly clenched hand. Sniffing experimentally at the contents, Allison took a tentative sip. Instantly her face twisted into a grimace of disgust and, in a single fluid motion, twisted around to dump the coffee down the nearby sink.

Setting the empty mug down on the counter, Allison reached out to grasp her friend by the shoulders and fix her with a stern, level glare. "Melanie, what in the world were you thinking? How many of those did you put in there?"

Realizing that there was no imminent threat, Melanie felt the adrenal surge beginning to abate, her senses dropping back down to normal levels. With the loss of the heightened combat state however, came renewed feelings of mental and physical exhaustion. Melanie had to struggle to keep herself from collapsing into her friend's arms.

"I…I don't know. What's the big deal? It's just coffee." Allison's face took on an expression of pained suffering at Melanie's words and she let out a long, wearied sigh through tightly clenched teeth.

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear you just say that," Allison managed to choke out after a few moments of visible effort. "But if you value your own life, then I _strongly_ suggest you never, _ever_, say anything like that within Monty's hearing. That girl takes her coffee _very_ seriously."

"Oh…uh, okay," Melanie replied, trembling slightly in both growing fatigue and from the seriousness of Allison's warning. "But…who's Monty?"

"She's another one of our sisters," Allison explained in a much calmer tone, now that the threat of coffee desecration had passed. "She and her handler, Jethro, are the agency's foreign field team. They take care of the more international interests that we don't strictly have jurisdiction over. You know, hunting down money trails and stopping weapon shipments before they reach Italian soil, stuff like that.

"They're pretty insistent on maintaining their own independence, so they only stop by here every few months to file paperwork or because Monty needs to check in with the doctors. But still, Monty practically worships the All-Mighty coffee bean, so watch what you say if she's ever around."

"Oh, okay."

"Now then," Allison continued, picking up and refilling Melanie's mug with a fresh cup of Italian dark roast. "Let me show you how this is done properly." With those words, Allison picked out three packets from a different pile as the ones Melanie had grabbed, pouring them in and stirring it up with a flat plastic stick until the power had fully dissolved. "The most sugar that should ever touch a cup of coffee is three packets' worth, Melanie. And use real sugar, not that artificial sweetener crap. Tastes just like the real thing my ass," Allison lectured calmly, grumbling under her breath at the last part.

Reaching into a small, glass-fronted bar fridge positioned next to the coffee and tea dispensers, Allison withdrew a carton of cream and poured two generous dollops in and stirred the mixture until the coffee had turned a much lighter honey-brown.

"There, try that." Allison handed the mug over to Melanie, who accepted hesitantly with a mumbled word of thanks.

Her first sip brought a wealth of flavours washing over her tongue. Melanie's eyes bulged slightly at the sudden influx of new taste sensations. The slightly bitter bite from before was still present, but it had been subdued and altered to a much more pleasing tang that lingered in her mouth.

"So?" Allison asked expectantly, eagerly awaiting Melanie's verdict.

"It…it's okay," Melanie replied, lowering the mug and shrugging diffidently.

"Okay? That's it; just okay?" Allison cried, alarmed and slightly insulted. Melanie cringed back slightly at the vehemence of her friend's tone. She hurried on, trying to placate the other girl. "Well, I mean I like it. Really, I do. It's just…it still, I don't know, tastes kind of…weird, is all."

"That's okay Melanie," Allison said lightly, laughing off the other girl's worried frown. "Coffee's a bit of an acquired taste anyways. Now come have breakfast. You look awful, by the way."

Not in the mood to eat, Melanie strode across the tiled floor in Allison's wake. In her present condition, Melanie felt that anything she tried putting in her stomach would only invariably come right back up again. She grumbled to herself at Allison's light-hearted, slightly teasing comment. _Yeah well, you try running fifteen miles with a hundred and fifty pounds strapped to your back after only two hours of sleep; see how perky you look then!_

Threading their way between the tables, the pair soon arrived amongst their friends, Allison slipping back into her seat. Melanie noted with dawning realization that her position gave the girl a perfect view of the juice and coffee nook to the immediate left of the main doors into the cafeteria; which explained her nigh-instantaneous reaction.

Agapita sat to Allison's immediate left. The slim raven-haired girl was engrossed in eating what appeared to be her second slice of pizza, baked fresh by the agency's own kitchen staff. She seemed in conflict with herself as the warring desires to both maintain a dignified appearance and devour the slice fought for dominance.

Seated across from Allison were Kara and her room mate Ilaria. Kara seemed fully recovered from her long overnight drive from the previous day. Bright-eyed and smiling, she was conversing eagerly with Ilaria, who only seemed to be half-listening. Beside Ilaria, her head flicking up sharply at Melanie and Allison's approach, sat Lucy.

Melanie froze in her tracks upon spotting her room mate. Their eyes locked together and Melanie levelled a fierce scowl in return to Lucretia's weak, hesitant smile. Resentment burned hot and sharp within Melanie and she deliberately turned away.

"Actually Allison, I'm not all that hungry, I think I'm just going to finish my coffee, take a shower and head out to the training fields. Jacob has me running rifle drills all morning and the sooner I start the better."

Glancing up from her oatmeal in mile surprise, Allison turned her head to gaze inquisitively over at Melanie. "Oh, okay. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Melanie retorted rather sharply, giving a brief, curt nod for emphasis. "I'm just tired and sore, is all."

"Well you don't look fine Melanie," Kara added, her dark, almond-shaped eyes crinkled with concern. "You look even worse than I did yesterday. You sure you're all right?"

The combined lack of sleep, aching body and pounding headache all drove Melanie to the brink of her patience. While she knew that her friends were only voicing sincere worry and concern for her, Melanie was in no mood to deal with their sympathies and lashed out angrily in reply to Kara's well-meaning prodding. "I said I'm fine; God, just leave me alone!"

"Melanie, wait," Kara replied as Melanie started to storm off in a grumbling huff. "Something is obviously bothering you Melanie. Just tell us what it is. Maybe we can help."

"Yeah," Agapita piped up, wiping off her hands on her napkin as she spoke. "We're your friends, Mel; let us help."

"You all want to know what's wrong?" Melanie barked, spinning back to face her friends, who all stared up at her expectantly. "Fine, I'll tell you what's wrong. What's wrong is that, thanks to Lucy, I only got two hours of sleep last night! My entire body aches all over, my head feels like it's about to explode and to top it all off, Jacob now absolutely hates me!"

As soon as she stopped talking there was a resounding chorus as all of her friends tried to speak at once; each offering her own words of sympathy and surprise. All but Lucretia, who merely shrank down in her seat, head lowered in misery and shame. Melanie could see that a thin film of tears shimmered in Lucretia's eyes filling her with a sense of callous satisfaction.

Kara stood up suddenly, waving everyone else to silence. She turned slightly, addressing Melanie once order had been restored. "Melanie what are you talking about? What happened last night and why did you only get two hours of sleep?"

Melanie sighed angrily, regretting her decision to open her mouth. She should have just ignored them all and left as she'd originally planned. Recognizing that it was too late now and that her friends would simply continue to hound her, Melanie grudgingly told them. She related the whole sordid experience, starting with how, after finishing with the coordination tests, she'd run into Henrietta, who had invited her over for tea and cake.

"So Jacob had me spend the whole night helping the cleaning crew mop floors and scrub toilets. And it's all Lucy's fault!" She finished, throwing her room mate a vicious, accusatory glare.

"Now hold on," Kara said sternly, her slightly pouty lips pressed into a thin line. "That's not fair Melanie. Lucy didn't force you to go to that tea party. You made the decision to go, even though you knew that you were disobeying Jacob."

"Well yeah, but the only reason I went was because Lucy promised to cover for me," Melanie retorted hotly. Her own bitter resentment was clouding Melanie's mind and Kara's critical rebuke and defence of Lucy was only angering her more.

"If I had known she would just end up passing out instead, I would never have agreed!"

"And it was wrong of Lucy to break her promise like that, I agree. You have every right to be upset with her for that," Kara continued, now in a much calmer, more placating tone.

Out of the corner of her eye, Kara noticed Lucretia opening her mouth to say something. Knowing that now was not the time, Kara flung one hand out to her side, one finger raised to indicate that the girl remain silent. She waited until she was sure that Lucretia was complying before going on. "But she _doesn't_ deserve to have all the blame for what happened dumped on her shoulders alone."

Kara's words and calming tone seemed to work and after a few moments of silence, Melanie relented. Her burning anger began to subside and she nodded stiffly. Head lowered to stare into her coffee, Melanie mumbled out grudging agreement. "Okay, fine. I guess you're right."

Kara gave her own nod of satisfaction and sat back down in her seat. The corners of her mouth twitched up into a slightly amused grin at the bemused, incredulous looks cast at her by her friends. Surprise intermingled with approval and admiration at having so deftly diffused the situation flashed across their faces.

Her friends' reactions, while amusing, were not entirely surprising. Kara could well understand their disbelief. With her normally quiet and friendly personality, a sense of humour that could at times veer towards the outright silly and her admitted penchant towards throwing Michele's money around everywhere she went, it came as no great surprise to her that they could at times forget she was trained as an inter-departmental liaison; a role that required careful study of inter-personal relations and diplomacy.

"Now why don't you join us Melanie?" Kara said cheerfully. "We can talk about how we can help convince Jacob to get off your back." With that comment, things slipped back into their normal routine and Melanie slowly lowered herself into the seat next to Allison.

Just as Kara was about to start offering suggestions, a flurry of rapid footsteps lightly clicking against the tiled floor drew everyone's attention. Turning about, they all saw Henrietta rushing up to their table. Her hair hung damp and dishevelled, as if she's only given it a few cursory swipes with a brush before hurrying out of the bathroom. Henrietta's crisp white shirt was left un-tucked and a slightly wild, panicky look filled her soft brown eyes.

"My God Henrietta, what's wrong?" Kara asked worriedly. Instead of answering her however, Henrietta turned her attention to Melanie, who frowned in confusion at the younger girl's intent stare. "Melanie, you need to get out of here, now! You're in grave danger!"

"Why?" Melanie wondered, setting her mug down and half-rising from her seat. "What's going on? Has Jacob found something _else_ to punish me over?"

Oblivious to Melanie's reference of the previous night's events, Henrietta pressed on, taking a quick step forward to grasp one of Melanie's hands with both of her own. "It's Nina; she's on her way from the showers right now and she looks _really_ awful. I think it would be a really bad idea if she were to see you right now."

Melanie stood frozen, gazing down into Henrietta's earnest, fearful expression. All at once something seemed to snap inside of her and Melanie felt all of her earlier anger and resentment boil back up; this time directed towards Nina.

"That is it," she hissed venomously, surging up to her feet. "I am so sick of her bitchy attitude. What the Hell gives her the right to walk all over anyone she wants? Well I'm through putting up with her. I swear: if she says so much as _one_ mean thing to me, then I'm going to smash her bitchy little face in!"

"Melanie," Kara cautioned worriedly, eyes darting towards the main doors. "That might not be a good idea. Maybe you should just…"

"I don't care!" Melanie snapped, cutting the other girl off. "It's not like I can get into any more trouble than I'm already in."

"Well they could always send you in to be reconditioned," Agapita pointed out, immediately shrinking back against the storm of disapproving glowers Kara, Ilaria and Allison all threw at her. But Melanie simply shook her head and pressed on doggedly.

"Fine, whatever; let them. God knows that after the week I've had, the idea of having all my memories wiped is starting to sound pretty good right about now." She opened her mouth to say something more, but at that moment, Nina walked through the broad double-doors. Instantly Melanie felt her words die in her throat and she felt her heart lurch inside her chest.

Nina immediately turned to her right and strode over to the buffet tables lined up in an 'L' shape against the walls. The entire left side of her face was a lumpy mass of bruises. The skin was heavily discoloured in mottled shades of dark blues, purples and yellows. The flesh around her right eye was bruised black and an inch long gash ran diagonally downward along the cheekbone on the same side. Nina held one arm pressed against her middle and Melanie could see that each breath came in quick, short gasps: evidence of cracked or broken ribs.

Nina picked up a tray and quickly grabbed a few items of food before spinning on her heel and stalking back out of the cafeteria. Not once did she lift her face to meet anyone's gaze.

"Oh God," Kara whispered, both hands pressed tight to her mouth, eyes wide with horror. "Not again."

"I…I don't understand," Melanie said hesitantly, sinking back down into her seat. "Why hasn't she gone to the hospital yet? She should be all fixed from our fight by now."

Gazing around at her friends, Melanie noticed that they all gazed down at their food, unwilling or unable to look up at her.

"Melanie," Kara said eventually, breaking the awkward silence. "Nina's injuries aren't from her fight with you yesterday. They're from her handler, Costante."

"What…what do you mean?" Melanie asked softly, a prickling sense of foreboding growing within her.

"Melanie, Nina's handler…well he…he's…abusive," Kara said simply, clearly struggling with how to best explain the situation. "Or at least, he used to be."

Feeling lost, Melanie could only stare helplessly, her mouth hanging agape. "I…I don't understand."

"He beats her, Melanie," Allison replied, sighing sadly. "Or, like Kara said: he used to."

"Up until a few months ago, Costante would hit Nina any time she messed something up during a mission or training, or stepped out of line too far," Ilaria piped up, elaborating. "Never in public where we could see it of course, but you could pretty much guarantee that Nina would show up to breakfast the next morning with some new injury."

Melanie couldn't believe what she was hearing. Her brain simply refused to accept what was being told to her. The very notion was so beyond appalling that it triggered an almost physical rejection.

"No. No I…I don't believe you; that's impossible," Melanie stammered out weakly, casting a pleading, almost desperate look between her friends. "There's just no way he could get away with something like that."

"I'm sorry Melanie, but it's true," Kara answered, nodding her head softly in grim affirmation.

"But why?" Melanie asked, demanding some kind of explanation. "Why would he be allowed to do that to her?"

"We're cyborgs Melanie," Ilaria said, shrugging despairingly. "As far as the government is concerned, we're not technically human. Hell, as far as they're concerned we're not even technically _alive_."

"So? What does that have to do with anything?" Melanie snapped heatedly, slightly angered at Ilaria's defeatist tone.

"Everything," Kara replied quickly, drawing Melanie's attention back to herself. "According to the government, we're all little more than robots; weapons owned by the agency. And agency protocol says that, as long as we're able to do our jobs when we're called upon, our handler's can treat us any way they see fit."

"So, what?" Melanie retorted, feeling a raging storm of bitterness and disgust churning up her insides. "Are you saying that any of our handlers could just come along and beat us into unconsciousness and no one would say anything? He'd just get away with it?"

"Well, technically yes, but…"

"That's insane! What kind of sick, twisted system is that?" Melanie cried. Her heart was pounding wildly in her chest and she was finding it hard to breath. A sick, nauseous feeling boiled and churned in her stomach. "Our handlers are supposed to be the one person in the world, above anyone else, who we can trust to protect us. How are we supposed to trust them if we're always afraid they're going to start abusing us?"

For a long while, no one said anything. Whether it was due to feelings of shame, embarrassment, or the simple inability to find the necessary words to properly respond, all around her, Melanie's friends fell silent.

"Frankly Melanie, I'm a little shocked that you're acting so surprised to all of this," Lucretia retorted, the first thing she had said since Melanie's arrival.

"What the Hell is _that_ supposed to mean?" Melanie snapped, anger and resentment flashing suddenly white-hot. She still wasn't ready to forgive her room mate's betrayal.

"Well considering the way Jacob's been treating you, I'd have thought you of all people would understand what we're talking about."

"Hey, I may not enjoy Jacob's punishments, but at least I can actually recognize them as being just that: _punishments_. As harsh as his methods may seem to you, they make sense to me."

"Make sense?" Lucretia cried with slightly stunned incredulity. "Melanie, he had you running fifteen _miles_ yesterday! In the rain and mud, while lugging around a one hundred and twenty pound rucksack!"

"Um…actually, that does kind of make sense," Agapita said suddenly, interrupting the rapidly intensifying fight. "You won't believe how many times Avise has lectured me about how, when he was going through boot camp in the army, they would have to do something like, fourteen mile rucksack marches twice a day."

"Yes, exactly; Jacob told me the same thing about when he was in the army too," Melanie replied, nodding briefly in thanks to Agapita.

Lucy frowned, uncertain, splitting her gaze between Agapita and Melanie. "Well okay; I guess that _does_ make sense then. But I still think it isn't fair the way he treats you, Melanie."

"I can handle Jacob's punishments Lucy," Melanie retorted. She struggled to modulate her tone and bring her anger under control. The majority of her hostility was directed at the agency and its seemingly tyrannical control over them.

"But what Nina's handler is doing to her _isn't_ punishment," she went on, her voice dropping to a soft, anguished whisper. "It's abuse; plain and simple. And no one deserves to be treated like that. No one."

In the intervening silence that followed Melanie's emphatic declaration, everyone gathered seemed to withdraw into their own thoughts. Most seemed stunned into stillness by the fact that Melanie actually seemed to be _defending_ Nina.

"It's okay Melanie," Henrietta said, her soft quiet voice seeming to resound within the oppressive pall that had descended on all gathered. Melanie jumped slightly in surprise. Much to the girl's embarrassment, she'd forgotten that Henrietta was still there.

Henrietta rested one small hand on her fellow cyborg's forearm, speaking with a gentle solemnity that pulled in everyone's attention like iron filings to a magnet. "It's not actually as bad as it sounds. Really. The truth is that the rules are usually used to help us; not hurt us."

"No offense Henrietta, but how can a rule that gives our handlers the right to physically assault us any time they want possibly be used to _help_ us?" Melanie asked, her voice tight with the strain of remaining calm.

"Because that rule pretty much goes hand-in-hand with the rule that says no-one is allowed to interfere with the way our handlers treat and train us," Allison answered, picking up on the smaller girl's train of thought. "I mean, there have been plenty of times when I've made some bone-headed screw-up on a mission that almost ruined everything, but Brain and I managed to pull it off and complete the job.

"If not for that rule, Jean would have had me either reconditioned or doped to my eyeballs with meds to make sure it never happened again. But because that rule is there, all he can do is bitch and whine about it. In the end it's Brian's call and I know he would never do that to me."

Kara jumped in on the heels of Allison's statement, offering Melanie a softly encouraging smile to try and reassure her. "Allison is right. We've pretty much all made mistakes during a mission that could have resulted in us having our dosages increased or worse. But because of those rules, it didn't happen.

"Not only that, but you have to remember: just because the government sees us as little more than talking 'murder machines' doesn't mean our handlers agree with that view. Almost every single one of our handlers genuinely cares about us and would do anything to protect us."

Turning her head slowly to regard everyone gathered at the table, Melanie saw each of her friends nodding in emphatic agreement. Finally, Ilaria spoke up to offer a final comment on the subject. "What you also don't realize Melanie, is that our handlers will actually police themselves if they think it's necessary. If enough of them feel that a handler is abusing his power and taking unfair advantage of his cyborg, they _will_ step in to stop it."

"So how has that helped Nina?" Melanie asked. Arching one eyebrow, she folded her arms across her slim chest and fixed Ilaria with a sceptical frown.

"Like we said Melanie: Costante _used _to abuse Nina. But five or six months ago Brian, Michele and a couple other handlers talked to Costante and convinced him to find some other way of disciplining her.

"This is the first time in almost half a year that she's shown any signs that he's been abusing her."

Melanie had nothing to say to that in response, so chose instead to just remain quiet. She slowly sank back down into her seat, arms resting on the table in front of her. The burden of information weighing on her mind seemed overwhelming. Her shoulders sagged under the force these revelations. It was almost more than she could bear.

A sentiment shared by all of her friends there at the table. They all felt that burden weighing upon them. The sight of Nina had stirred up dark thoughts and painful emotions within all of them. None of the girls enjoyed being reminded about the glaring, ugly truths of their existence. For all the care and loving attention their handlers gave them, there was no escaping the fact that, in the end, they were literal slaves to the agency and the government.

And that was the brutal reality of the truth revealed by Nina's bruised face and battered body. Hers might have been an abuse that was immediately visible to all, but the cold hard truth was that they were all just as much victims of the agency as she was.

"Well this has been wonderfully depressing," Allison declared suddenly with slightly forced cheerfulness, startling everyone from their private musings. Bracing her hands on the table, she heaved herself to her feet. Collecting her empty breakfast dishes, she shared a brief smile that was only slightly forced and began to move off towards the serving counters. "I'll see you all in class later. Brian and I are spending morning training out at the driving center. I think I've finally managed to convince the Q-Branch mechanics to let me tune up my Evo to Group 'B' specs."

"Wait up," Ilaria chirped, gathering her empty dishes and hurrying to join Allison. "I've got advanced evasion tactics with Olga today." Without another word or backward glance, the pair left to drop off their dishes and then departed the cafeteria.

Agapita, Kara and Lucretia left soon afterwards, the first two girls both headed to the urban assault training complex for their morning training, Lucretia headed to the indoor range. Even Henrietta, who had spent the last several minutes standing at the edge of the table staring about awkwardly, departed a short time later. The poor girl had quickly been all but forgotten again by the older girls. Not that she had minded. She hadn't really understood what the big deal was about. After all, Jean sometimes hit Rico when she made a mistake or he was upset with her and she never seemed to mind.

With Henrietta's departure, Melanie was left sitting alone, hands wrapped about her slowly cooling cup of coffee. The abruptly imposed solitude left her thoughts drawing inward. Despite her heated words to Lucretia, Melanie felt a pang of sadness and self-pity. For a brief moment, she wondered if anyone would step in on _her_ behalf.

The moment the thought formed within her mind Melanie chased it away with a vicious vengeance. Shaking her head violently and growling low in her throat, she refused to allow the idea to sink in and take root. Melanie had meant what she's said to Lucretia about being able to put-up with and accept Jacob's treatment and punishments.

Realizing that her sitting around by herself would only serve to further foster the growth of such depressing and self-pitying thoughts, Melanie determinedly choked back the rest of her coffee. Draining the cup in four long swallows she rose and quickly crossed the tiled floor to drop it off on the end of the serving counter.

After that, Melanie made her way back to her dorm room to grab her sniper rifle and cleaning kit. She placed both items in the deep forest-green Kevlar rifle bag Jacob had supplied to her from the agency armouries.

Despite knowing that Jacob would be upset if she were late, Melanie still allowed herself a few moments to run her hands lovingly down the length of the long-barrelled weapon. Her fingers caressed the dark hunter-green finish of the stock, trailing up the length of the aluminum chassis and along the fluted barrel. Melanie adored the rifle and the times she spent out on the long-distance range with it were some of the only bright points in her relationship with Jacob.

Melanie felt completely at ease whenever she was laid out on the quilted shooter's mat, the butt pad pressed tight to the small of her shoulder, cheek resting on the thinly padded cheek-plate. The feeling of profound peace and serenity that overtook her as she gazed through the lens of the fifty-six millimetre Schmidt and Bender scope was incredible. Staring down the length of the range at her target, lining up the targeting reticule, finger slowly contracting on the trigger, the entire world seemed to fall away. All that mattered in those few precious moments was her and the target.

Pulling herself free of the pleasant, almost romanticised thoughts tumbling through her head, Melanie retrieved the rifle's scope, flash suppressor and silencer. Placing each accessory item into its own padded pocket, she zipped up the bag and slung it over her shoulder. She then set out on the long, tedious walk out to the agency's training grounds. Jacob had her scheduled to spend the entire morning training session working on rifles drills. She was genuinely looking forward to it. She only hoped she would be able to stay awake.

* * *

"Melanie! Hey Melanie, hold on."

Hearing her name being called insistently, Melanie slowed her pace to allow the person addressing her time to catch up. She ran a hand back through her damp hair, idly twirling one forelock around her finger as Lucretia approached.

Eying her room mate askance, Melanie struggled to set aside lingering feelings of bitter antipathy. It wasn't easy. Kara's words of admonishment that Lucretia wasn't to blame for Melanie's current troubles were all well and good and she understood and accepted them. But that knowledge did little good in changing how she felt.

"What do you want Lucy?" her voice came out flat and toneless; an effect of her effort to maintain a civil attitude. A fact that wasn't lost on Lucretia, who winced slightly in reaction and stumbled up to a stop a few paces short of her room mate.

"Look Melanie, I'm really sorry about last night and I know that doesn't really change anything about what happened, but still…I'm sorry." Lucretia stood in the middle of the hallway, head hung low in shame. She kept her hands clasped in front of her, fidgeting awkwardly.

A small twinge of guilt wormed its way through Melanie's insides and she rolled her eyes, sighing with mile exasperation. "It's fine Lucy. Like Kara said: it wasn't your fault. I'm not mad at you; I'm just tired and frustrated, is all." That was a lie, but Melanie felt that, at the very least, the effort meant more than actually sincerity.

Blinking, Lucretia glanced up, meeting Melanie's flat, level gaze. "Oh, well…okay; I guess." Lucretia glanced away, slightly unnerved and uncomfortable with maintaining eye contact. She wasn't an idiot. Melanie could say she wasn't mad at her all she wanted; Lucy knew she still was.

"Was there something you wanted?" Melanie asked, causing Lucretia to jump slightly.

The slim, raven-haired girl snapped her attention back around, eyes widening faintly. "Oh yeah, that's right. I thought of way to get Jacob off of your back and get back into his good-graces at the same time."

Melanie was reluctant to place her trust in what would no doubt prove to be some crazy, hair-brained scheme. Lucretia's last idea had ended up costing Melanie a full night's sleep and her handler's trust, after all. Once again, that thought left a tiny worm of guilt gnawing at her and looking into Lucretia's sincere, pleading face Melanie couldn't help but be moved by the girl's honest desire to help.

"I know I'm going to regret this later," Melanie sighed, rubbing at her temples wearily. Her next words were spoken as if each one were being forcibly dragged from her. A fact that was not far from the truth. "Okay fine, what's you idea?"

Lucretia instantly leapt forward, ecstatic and eager to prove herself to her friend. If everything worked out as she hoped, not only would Melanie be back on track with Jacob, but Lucretia herself would be back in Melanie's good-books as well.

"Okay, now this is going to sound a little crazy at first, but hear me out," Lucretia said, linking one arm around Melanie's elbow and proceeding to drag the other girl down the hallway towards their classroom.

_Oh yeah, I'm regretting this already,_ Melanie grumbled silently to herself, glaring at the back of Lucretia's head.

"Okay, so basically," Lucretia powered on, oblivious to Melanie's dark, sour look. "The whole plan kind of hinges on the idea that Jacob's latest punishment is meant to see you fail on purpose."

"He wants to see me fail? What does that mean?" Melanie asked, trying unsuccessfully to pull her arm free and slow down.

"Well, it makes sense. I mean, Jacob told you not to go to the party because it would interfere with you getting enough sleep."

"I know that," Melanie grumbled irritably.

Lucretia continued talking almost overtop of Melanie's reply, as if she'd never spoken at all. "So then, by you going anyway, you basically told him that you can stay up as late as you want and still do fine during your training in the morning. So he wants to prove to you that you can't."

Frowning to herself, Melanie nodded slowly. Seeing what Lucretia was getting at, admitted reluctantly, "I guess that kind of make sense."

"Great," Lucretia chirped, pulling Melanie in through the door into the broad, lecture hall-styled classroom. "Then all you have to do is: not fail."

Melanie blinked in mild shock at the simple, blunt statement. She waited for Lucretia to elaborate, to explain what the rest of her plan entailed, but when nothing further came from the girl Melanie dug in her heels and jerked herself to an abrupt halt, forcing the other girl to stop as well.

"That's it?" Melanie cried incredulously. "_That's_ you great master plan? 'Don't fail?'"

"Well, there…there's more to it than…than that," Lucretia mumbled, her face beginning to burn in embarrassment. Her hands worked nervously at her waist, twisting and kneading the hem of her t-shirt.

"Well I would certainly hope so. Because right now, your "plan" sounds an awful lot like I should just "suck-it-up" and keep going." Melanie mentally berated herself for being stupid enough to actually think Lucy could actually help her. At least her _last_ idea had actually made sense.

"Look, I said it would sound a little crazy, but…"

"A _little crazy_?" Melanie interjected sourly.

"But there _is_ more to it than just "suck-it-up" and keep going Melanie. I promise."

Pressing both palms against the sides of her head against the throbbing, pounding pain, Melanie groaned. Why was she even still listening to this? Because a small part of her _wanted_ to find a reason to forgive Lucretia and move past this stupid fight, that was why. So despite the fact that it was against her better judgement, Melanie brought her hands back down and, sucking in a deep, soothing breath to steady her nerves, turned to regard Lucretia once more.

"Okay, I'm listening."

Lucretia beamed, flashing Melanie a broad, ear-to-ear grin. Together they made their way through the classroom, picking out two empty seats on the left side of the room, nearest the row of gallery windows.

At the front of the room, up on the raised dais, Victor Hilshire stood behind the wooden podium. Head bowed slightly, the tall thin man spoke in hushed tones with Triela, who stood close by his side. Hands moving slowly and methodically over a series of textbooks and binders, the pair went over some last minutes preparations for the coming lesson. The slim blonde shook her head and chuckled faintly at some comment her handler made, swatting his upper arm playfully.

"Okay, so, first of all, let me ask you: would you say Jacob is the kind of person to put a lot of value on hard work and determination?" Lucretia asked, swivelling around in her seat. She waited for Melanie's hesitant nod of affirmation before continuing on in a rush. "Great, okay then; so all we need to do is prove to Jacob that you _can_ put up with anything and everything he throws at you. Then, after a few days of his seeing you managing to keep up with your training and your school work, not to mention those fifteen mile death-marches he's got you doing, as well as the overnight chores, he'll _have_ to be impressed and relent."

Melanie considered the idea carefully. It was a deceptively simple prospect, but she had to admit that there was merit to Lucretia's thinking. More than anything else in the world, Melanie wanted Jacob's approval and respect. The only time she had ever felt as if she'd had it was after that first Hellish march.

"That actually doesn't sound like a bad idea," Melanie admitted at last. "It could work."

"What could work?"

Both girls turned at the sound of Kara's voice, their friend plopping herself down in the seat next to Melanie.

In response to Kara's inquiry, Lucretia briefly outlined the basic premise of her plan. When she was finished, Kara was nodding sagely, one finger pressed daintily to her bottom lip.

"Not bad Lucy; very clever. It's certainly a simple plan, but that's usually a good thing. The simpler the plan, the less there is to go wrong."

"Exactly," Lucretia chirped in reply, a distinct note of pride in her voice.

"The only problem," Melanie said with a heavy sigh, folding her arms on the desk and resting her chin on them. "Is that I honestly don't think I can pull it off. I'm so exhausted that I think I'm actually going to be sick."

Kara pursed her lips, eyes narrowing in deep contemplation. "Well, I could always talk to Michele and see about his letting you sleep through his classes. I'm positive I can convince him once I tell him what's going on."

"Are you sure?" Melanie asked sceptically, frowning with uncertainty. "I mean, he _is_ a handler, after all. And wouldn't this kind of count as his interfering with Jacob's job as _my_ handler?"

"I suppose you _could_ look at it that way," Kara admitted, giving a sheepish shrug of her shoulders. "But try to remember who you're talking to here, Melanie. Triela might be the agency's 'Princess', but I happen to be the 'Good-Karma Queen'. Oh and that gives me an idea." Kara perked up then, eyes widening with a sudden dawning realization. Standing up abruptly, she waved one arm above her head, calling out toward the front of the room. "Triela! Hey Triela, come over here."

Dropping back down in her seat, Kara waited patiently as Triela excused herself from Hilshire's side and slowly made her way over to the trio.

Watching the slim girl approach, Melanie felt a sharp pang of jealousy. Triela's every step came with a level of liquid grace and smooth precision that was awe-inspiring to anyone who knew what they were looking at.

The heels of Triela's black leather riding boots clicked sharply against the tiled floor, the folds of her navy-blue pleated skirt swishing against the tanned skin of her thighs. The sleeves of her blue-black knitted wool turtle-neck sweater were pushed up, above her elbows.

"What's up?" Triela asked brightly, blue eyes blinking owlishly as she came to a stop before the three. Her face fell abruptly at the sight of Melanie seated between the other two girls. "Oh, hello Melanie. I'm really sorry we got you into trouble last night. Hilshire was pretty mad at me when he found out."

"That's okay Triela; it was my fault for disobeying Jacob in the first place." Melanie managed to offer a weak smile, trying her best to reassure Triela, who stood with hands clasped before her.

A look of sombre contriteness creased the girl's softly rounded features, her eyes lowered to the floor differentially. "Well I still feel really bad about it. Especially since I heard about what Mr. Mehrandish has you doing as punishment. I just wish there was some way I could help you out."

"Actually Triela," Kara said, grinning slyly. "The reason I called you over was because there just so happens to be something that you _can_ do to help us get Melanie out of trouble." That seemed to perk Triela up. She practically stumbled over herself in the rush to declare her willingness to help. Kara then filled Triela in on what was going on, explaining the plan and all it entailed. When it got to the part about Melanie's possibly sleeping through Hilshire's classes, Triela grew instantly uncomfortable. Her eyes began to dart around, as if seeking some avenue of escape. She shifted from foot to foot, squirming nervously.

"I don't know Kara," Triela said hesitantly, face twisted into a sour grimace. The very idea of asking Hilshire to help them violate agency protocols set off a slightly nauseous feeling in the veteran cyborg's stomach. "Hilshire is pretty strict about us taking our school lessons seriously."

Kara jumped in quickly with her response in an effort to ease Triela's concerns. "We aren't suggesting that she not do her work Triela, or even that we do it for her. Lucy, Allison and I can simply take notes for her and then she can do the work in her free time.

"All we're asking is that Victor let her sleep through the classes themselves." Kara pressed her hands together and held them up before her. Looking up at the other girl, watery eyes wide and pleading, Kara gave Triela her best 'puppy-dog' look; one that rarely ever failed to turn Michele around to her line of thinking.

"Well," Triela said, cracks spreading through her reluctance. "I suppose it wouldn't hurt to just ask him."

"That's great Triela; you're the _best_!" Kara leapt up, flinging her arms around the much shorter girl and giving her an enthusiastic hug of appreciation. "You hear that Melanie? You practically out of the proverbial 'dog-house' already."

"Now hold on," Triela objected, extricating herself from Kara's embrace with no small amount of forceful effort. "I'm not promising anything here. All I said was that I would _talk_ to Hilshire; not that he would agree."

"Minor details Triela, minor details," Kara scoffed, waving one hand dismissively.

Muttering to herself under her breath, Triela stalked off, returning to her handler's side to confer with him on the matter. All three girls waited expectantly, watching with eyes glued to the pair at the front of the room. When Triela turned back towards them and flashed the trio a quick 'thumbs-up', Kara gave a wild hoot of joy and bounced back to her feet.

Realizing that everyone in the room was now staring at her, including her two friends next to her, Kara dropped sharply back down, her face burning bright red in embarrassment.

All throughout this process of discussion and planning, more girls had begun to file into the classroom. Triela went to take a seat next to Claes, with Henrietta positioned two rows up from them.

Allison and Agapita arrived together several minutes before the class was scheduled to start, the later veering away to sit with Petra and a couple of her friends. Allison, however, steered herself directly towards Kara and instantly launched into a heated tirade the moment her rear-end hit her seat. Apparently, the technicians down at Q-Branch were being stubborn and still refusing to allow Allison to upgrade her car's performance. This had the brunette gear-head up-in-arms over what she saw as a personal slight against her.

As far as Melanie herself was concerned, she phased out almost as soon as she saw Triela's affirming gesture. Within only a few scant moments, exhaustion was washing over her in crashing waves. Resting her folded arms on the desk, Melanie's head slowly sank down until she was cradling her cheek in the crook of one elbow.

Melanie's jaw cracked faintly as she yawned deeply. Eyes drooping shut, the dwindling sounds of Allison's voice faded into the background. The corners of her mouth twitched upwards ever-so-slightly in a faint smile and without sparing so much as a single thought, she was asleep.

* * *

The sound of Melanie and Jacob's footsteps echoed off the heavy concrete walls. The dull clumping of their shoes on the floor was underscored by the distant noise of sporadic gunshots filtering through from below.

Reaching into his pocket, Jacob withdrew his identification card and ran it through the card reader beside the heavy steel door. There was a sharp, electric beep followed by a loud, grinding click of the locks disengaging and the status indicator flashed green.

Melanie stepped forward to ease the massive door open, receiving a curt nod of thanks from Jacob. The hinges gave an echoing squeal that set Jacob and Melanie's teeth on edge and made both wince noticeably. Jacob took note of the issue and reminded himself to let the maintenance crew know about it.

The pair stepped though into the armoury, taking a moment to get their bearings in the tightly packed room. Jacob frowned to himself, head swivelling as he stared about in an attempt to locate what they had come here for.

"I think the shotguns are over there somewhere," he mumbled, half to himself. Melanie nodded her understand and began picking her way over to where Jacob had indicated.

Just under two weeks had passed since her fateful decision to accept Lucretia's plan. She had known going into it that it would likely prove the hardest challenge she had ever undertaken. And she had been right.

While Michele and Hilshire both had given their individual approvals for Melanie to catch up on her sleep during classes, only being able to sleep for forty-five minutes at a time was a poor replacement to an actual full night's rest. As a supplement, Melanie had been forced to take up regular infusions of caffeine. Even Allison was left horrified by the sheer volume of coffee Melanie was consuming.

Jacob was no fool, however. After the first day and another sleepless night spent working with the cleaning crew, Jacob had realized what Melanie was up to. His response was to come down even harder on her. If not for the fact that all of Melanie's free time was spent finishing her mountain-loads of homework, she felt certain that Jacob would have annexed that time for even more training as well.

As the days wore on and Melanie continued to stand firm in her resolve, Jacob's demands on her performance became increasingly harsh. He allowed no room for error and insisted upon absolute excellence. For virtually every other girl, an average accuracy rating of eighty-five percent was deemed suitable for training. Not for Melanie. If she scored anything under ninety-five, Jacob would chew her out with a savage vehemence that would leave her trembling.

After a week of this increasingly brutal treatment, however, Melanie started to notice a grudging change in Jacob's behaviour. Just as Lucretia had predicted, Jacob slowly began to recognize and respect the ferocity of Melanie's unrelenting determination to meet his expectations; regardless of how absurdly high they were.

In the days that followed that epiphany of perception, Jacob altered his stance; switching objectives from trying to break Melanie's spirit to instead _challenging_ her. The goals and expectations Jacob set before her began to reflect what he believed she was genuinely capable of meeting and only increased when Melanie had proven herself capable of meeting them consistently.

And then the best change had come: only the night before, Jacob had finally relented on the extra punishments and given Melanie back her nights. She had almost wept with joy. Even better was the fact that, in an almost unfathomable act of mercy, Jacob had given her half of the morning off to sleep in.

The first thing Jacob had done upon meeting her in the cafeteria was take her over to the armoury. A few days ago, when it was obvious to her that Jacob had come around in his thinking, Melanie had hesitantly told him about Rico's idea of her using a shotgun as her primary sidearm, rather than a pistol. Intrigued by the idea, yet still not willing to openly acknowledge any trust for her at that point, Jacob had merely shuffled the prospect to the back of his mind.

Now though, Jacob was willing to look into the possibility.

Jacob talked offhandedly as he searched through the neatly cluttered aisles, most of his attention directed towards the search. "There are only a few different variations on your basic shotgun, so all we really need to do is pick the variation that best fits our general combat role."

"Well, I'm a wilderness tracker and a sniper, so most of our time will probably be spent out in the bush. That means space and weight will both be an issue, right? So maybe something small and easy to carry would be best," Melanie reasoned logically, doing her best to use Jacob's training and her friends' own advice to provide some meaningful input.

"Good idea," Jacob replied simply, rewarding her forethought and sending a thrill of pleasure zipping through her. "I think Fabarm has some compact shotguns and I know the latest versions of Benelli's guns have folding stocks that make them a lot shorter."

Melanie nodded her agreement, continuing on the conversation absently while she trailed behind Jacob. "Yeah, Lucy's handler Enzo uses a Super Ninety and its stock does telescope in and out."

"Well that's an option, then. Here we go." He stopped suddenly, pulling up short in front of one particular rack of weapons near one of the armoury's outer walls. The lower third of the shelving unit was a single long rack holding nearly two dozen combat shotguns. Above them and piled on the shelves in well-ordered stacks, were dozen of more shotguns, still in their original shipping boxes.

Looking over the selection, Jacob picked out a compact shotgun from Italian weapons manufacturer Fabarm, which featured a pistol-styled grip and a folding stock. "Come here and see what you think of this."

Melanie walked slowly over to Jacob's side. A strange, fluttering lurch in the pit of her stomach awakened the moment her gaze fell upon the racked shotguns and an odd tightness in her chest made each breath a slight struggle to draw in. Deep in the back of her mind, Melanie could faintly make out distant noise; like the voice of crowd roaring in anger and excitement.

"What's wrong?" Jacob barked gruffly, noting the mildly distressed look on her face.

Melanie blinked in surprise, realizing that she had completely spaced out momentarily. She hastened to reply, shaking her head dismissively as she did so. "Oh, uh…it's nothing. I just started feeling a little dizzy. Probably from lack of sleep. It'll probably take me a couple days to completely sort myself out."

Knowing full well the reasons behind Melanie's feeling out of sorts, Jacob contented himself with a noncommittal grunt in reply.

Opening the box, Jacob withdrew the weapon and held it out to Melanie, who took it hesitantly in both hands. He saw her eyes bulge wide the instant the shotgun settled onto her palms and her mouth dropped open. He felt a sudden pang of worry as all the colour seemed to visibly leech from Melanie's face and her lips began to tremble.

Melanie watched, transfixed as Jacob's lips moved, no sound seeming to issue forth. She blinked slowly as his face creased with growing puzzled concern. She knew he was talking to her, was likely demanding to know what was wrong, but she couldn't hear anything. All noise was swallowed up and drowned out by the deafening roar in her mind.

The slow, subtle fluttering in the pit of her stomach flared up into a roiling, churning storm. Melanie's stomach began to convulse spasmodically and she could taste bile on the back of her tongue.

"J...Jacob, I don't feel very…" That was as far as she got, as Melanie felt her stomach give a sickening heave and she promptly vomited noisily. At the very least, she managed to retain the presence of mind to thrust her head down towards the ground, sparing Jacob from being sprayed.

Pain exploded behind Melanie's eyes and she cried out in agony, tears suddenly spilling down her face. Dropping the shotgun to the floor, she pressed her hands to her head in a vain attempt to alleviate the pain. The roar was beginning to sharpen and she could pick out individual voices. Voices screaming in pain, fear and anger warred for dominance in her mind.

Her vision receded until it seemed to Melanie that she was staring out at Jacob from deep within a blackened tunnel. Misty shadows distorted and obscured everything and no matter how hard and desperately she fought to clear them, they only grew darker.

In some dim recess of her mind, Melanie was aware of the sensation of having struck the ground with her shoulder. But as she was pulled deeper and deeper into the darkened void, all connection with her physical body seemed to slip away.

The shadows began to writhe in her vision, slowly resolving themselves into the hazy, indistinct form a man. The shadowy man stood at Melanie's side and she could feel one hand pressed gently to one shoulder. Strangely, she felt a sense of comfort and safety from that contact.

A sudden burst of light enveloped Melanie, blinding her and she threw up one hand to shield her eyes against the glare. More shadowy forms closed in, blocking off the burning light and swarmed around her. Sudden, angry shouting filled the air, punctuated by a harsh, grating laughter.

The shadowy man at Melanie's side pushed her away harshly and she felt herself slowly, as if she moved through syrup. The twisted, menacing shadow-forms launched themselves at the shadow-man, tearing and clawing and biting.

There was a dull flash as the light from the open portal glinted off steel and then a resounding clap of thunder inundated all of Melanie's senses with its savage cacophony of sound. She gagged on the overpowering stench of sulphur suffusing the air. Her heart skipped a beat from the explosive pressure wave emitted by the thunderous blast.

Something hot and sticky splashed across Melanie's face. Wiping both hands down her face to clear her vision, they came away stained a bright crimson. An agonized wail of unbridled terror tore through Melanie's mind. It took her a moment to realize the person giving voice to such soul-rending anguish was herself.

Hands twisted into bent, crooked claws reached out to her from all directions at once. They plucked at her hair, clutching at her shoulders and arms. Faces hidden in shadow leered down at her, maniacally-grinning mouths filled with bestial fangs swimming in her vision. Cruel fingers ran down the length of her body, pinching at her hips and thighs. Rough, callused hands fondled her chest and stomach.

She screamed, thrashing around wildly. But the hands only tightened their grasp. They pushed at her shoulders and knees, holding her in place, pinning her down. Again she screamed, kicking, clawing, biting; fighting to escape.

Something tiny and sharp pricked at Melanie's leg, right at the junction of her hip. Almost instantly a soothing calm begin to settle over her and her limbs became leaden and stiff. She tried to lift her head but found that her body was no longer responding to her commands.

They had drugged her!

With an explosion of desperate effort, Melanie managed to force her body into compliance. Tearing one arms free, she lashed out, feeling her hand connect solidly with something soft yet firm. She heard a satisfying grunt of pain in response to the blow.

A deep, growling voice tumbled through her head, barking savage orders at her. She shook her head, refusing to so much as acknowledge the voice. She screamed in vehement protest as more hands sought to grapple with her. "Īe! Īe! Watashi ni te o furenaide kudasai! Watashi ni te o furenaide kudasai!"

The voice continued to bark at her with increasing vehemence, to no avail. At that moment, as Melanie was just beginning to feel confident that she was triumphing over her oppressors, a new voice cut through the foggy haze. "Omona komando wa: Yame nasai!"

Melanie's body instantly locked up, every muscle freezing in place. No matter how hard she fought to force her body to obey, it remained stubbornly rigid and unresponsive.

Unable to thrash and fight, the drugs pumping through Melanie's bloodstream had time to seep out and fully saturate her system. With that diffusion came a growing calm. Her heart-rate slowed, returning to a more stable, normal pace. Each breath came slower and easier than the last.

The lingering voices faded, the writhing shadows dispersing like wispy tendrils of clouds after a heavy rain. The crawling, sickening sensation of clawed hands pawing at her subsided and finally vanished altogether.

All at once, Melanie's eyes popped open and she sucked in a deep, shuddering breath. Her vision swam crazily and it took her a few moments for everything to come into focus. A ring of faces hovered over her and she had a momentary flash of panic. She eventually was able to pick out Jacob, Michele and Doctor Bianchi from among that hovering ring.

Everything fell quickly into place then, as the remaining faces resolved themselves into those of various support staff members and a few handlers and fellow cyborgs. She recognized Priscilla's worried face, framed by her wavy, shoulder-length dirty-blonde hair.

Seeing that she was once again conscious, Bianchi ordered everyone else besides Jacob and the pair of medical technicians he had brought with him away. With the emotional ordeal she had just suffered, the last thing he reasoned that Melanie needed was a bunch of gawkers crowding around her, making her feel even more uncomfortable.

He did however spare a few words of thanks for Michele before the man left. If not for the man's quick thinking and fluency in Japanese, they would likely still be wrestling with Melanie. Bianchi would have to be sure to pass this new information around to the rest of the medical staff and all handlers. They needed to know that, if their cyborg ever relapsed into their former identities, trying to use the primary commands in native Italian might not work.

Giving swift instructions, Bianchi directed the technicians to gently lift Melanie and set her on the reinforced stretcher. Strapping her in place they picked her up and slowly made their way back towards the hospital.

Straightening, Bianchi glanced over at Jacob, was remained squatted down, unmoving.

"How's your face?" he asked, lifting one hand to vaguely indicate the vivid bruise beginning to darken one entire side of the man's face from just below the eye socket to the lower jaw. He would have to be sure to have the injury checked out later. With the speed and force Melanie's hand had flung out and cracked against Jacob's head, he was lucky she hadn't broken his jaw.

"It's fine," Jacob replied distractedly. Bianchi waited patiently, leaning up against the side of one weapon rack. His psychiatrist's instincts told him there was more Jacob wanted to say and Bianchi contented himself to wait until Jacob was ready to talk.

"I don't know what happened," the man eventually said, sounding angry and confused. "She was perfectly fine one moment and the next, she was freaking out and screaming."

"What happened was, she had a severe emotional reaction that stirred up buried memories from her past," Bianchi replied slowly and carefully, folding his arms across his chest. "That reaction triggered memories of whatever traumas led to her being brought to us to the surface."

Jacob frowned, raking one hand back through his hair as he slowly rose. "Well what the hell could have triggered it? All I did was hand her a shotgun. She took one look at it and puked all over the floor."

"Then it stands to reason that the shotgun itself was the trigger," Bianchi replied simply, shrugging. "And believe it or not, this was actually a good thing."

At first Jacob didn't know what the man was talking about. He certainly couldn't see anything good about Melanie having taken a severe seizure just because she had touched a shotgun. But then realization struck Jacob and he nodded knowingly, understanding what Bianchi was getting at. "Because now you know the root cause of her mental issues, right?"

"Exactly," Bianchi replied, nodding his agreement. "With this information, we can start treating Melanie and eventually help her overcome this deep-seeded fear."

"And just how long will that take?" Jacob asked, already knowing what the answer would likely be.

Doctor Bianchi sighed, reaching up with one hand to scratch at his jaw. "Unfortunately, given the intensity of her reaction, the instinctual memories are rooted very deeply into her psyche and are extremely powerful. Even if we were to employ extensive therapies in all standard forms of treatment, including chemical brainwashing, hypnotherapy, as well…"

"Yeah, spare me the psycho-babble and give me the bottom line Bianchi," Jacob snapped irritably, interrupting the other man, who broke off with a faint scowl. "How long?"

Bianchi cast an indignant glare in Jacob's direction. The look merely rolled off irate handler, who returned Bianchi's look with a flat, stony stare. Finally, after several moments of awkward silence, he replied grudgingly. "I have no idea. Weeks, months, even years. It's possible that, while we might be able to get Melanie to a point where she can use her sidearm, she may _never_ be able to shoot with the kind of accuracy demanded by the agency's standards."

"Well that's just great Bianchi. And what the Hell do expect me to do while all of this is going on? Just sit around with my thumb up my ass?"

Doctor Bianchi cringed slightly at the crass vulgarity. Honestly, what was it with Westerners and their seemingly obsessive insistence in using such low-brow colloquialisms?

Struggling to contain his distaste and annoyance, Bianchi managed a smooth face as he replied calmly. "If I were you Jacob, I would start to consider some of those alternate weapon ideas we talked about a couple of weeks ago."

"You mean that idea about her using throwing knives instead of a traditional sidearm?" Jacob replied, his fierce glower softening into a thoughtful look as Bianchi bobbed his head in confirmation. "I might just look into that then. It's certainly sounding better and better all the time. I'll have to talk to Jean about reworking the requirements of the combat test though."

"I'm sure you two will figure something else," Bianchi muttered brusquely as he pushed himself away from the weapons-rack. "Now come on. I need to take a look at your face to make sure nothing is broken in there. Not that I really expect there to be." That last bit was muttered under his breath, so as not to be heard by Jacob himself.

Shocked at how surprisingly wearied he felt by the whole experience, Jacob uncharacteristically allowed himself to be led out of the armoury and towards the hospital without protest.


	7. Chapter 06: The Hunt begins

Chapter 06: The Hunt Begins

Two full days rolled by with a kind of slow, grinding monotony as Melanie was kept confined to the hospital. The majority of her time – when she wasn't being poked, prodded, tested and monitored to ensure she was both mentally and physically stable – was spent alone. Left to simply lie in bed staring up at the ceiling or out the window, she honestly felt she would have gone insane if not for Doctor Belisario's agreement to allow her friends to visit. There were restrictions, of course, such as only two people being allowed in to see her at a time and that time being strictly limited, but it was better than nothing.

The doctors and technicians were leery of the possibility of a sudden and potentially violent relapse if she were taxed too heavily. As such, as an added precaution, Melanie had an intravenous solution of heavily watered-down conditioning medication hooked up to one arm that ensured that she remained calm and compliant.

Unfortunately it also left her feeling spaced-out and numb.

With the constant flow of medication flowing through her veins, Melanie had to struggle to pay attention to what people were saying to her. Too often she found herself fixating on small, irrelevant details around the room. Much to her embarrassment, at one point she realized that she had spent almost ten minutes staring intently at a dust mote as it drifted lazily through the air.

Even as Doctor Belisario directed a pair of technicians in the administering of yet another test, Melanie's entire focus was on that single fleck of dust. Her eyes slowly and carefully tracked its movement, completely blanking out anything that was being said to her.

It was worse when she did it while her friends were there, though. The doctors and technicians, at least, understood and didn't particularly care. So long as she answered their direct inquiries honestly and concisely, they were satisfied.

When her friends came to visit, however, Melanie always felt guilty afterwards when she realized that she had been spacing out and ignoring them. It wasn't fair to them, who had to take time out of their own schedules to visit her, only to have her lie there almost catatonic.

Jacob only stopped by to check on her once during those two days and he had been distant and preoccupied the entire time. Melanie didn't mind the almost cold treatment from him though. The fact that he had even bothered to see her meant more than any kind words or affectionate behaviour he might have offered.

In the morning of the third day after her collapse and breakdown, Doctors Bianchi and Belisario finally cleared her to leave the hospital and resume her training. Melanie almost tore the IV out of her arm in her haste to escape. Practically bolting out of bed, she threw on her clothes and slipped out the door as quickly as possible, before they had a chance to change their minds.

There was one small benefit to be found from the whole experience, however. After three days of constant drugging and testing, Melanie walked out of the hospital with a profoundly deepened understanding and sympathy to the lives that both Rico and Claes lived on a daily basis. Rico's dazed and distracted behaviour made so much more sense after having experienced first-hand what it was like to be subjected to a similar level of conditioning. But for her, there was no escape from the mentally crippling effects of the drugs.

Aware of Claes' status within the agency as their official "guinea pig", Melanie had a newly-awakened appreciation for just how hard it must be for the younger girl. Having teams of doctors and technicians swarming around you, not a single one of them concerned for her as a person, merely as a technological investment that was malfunctioning, was horribly dehumanizing and utterly humiliating. If not for the medication flowing through her veins, numbing her thoughts and emotions, Melanie would have been left weeping in abject shame after each round of tests.

Much to Melanie's surprise and delight, Jacob was there to meet her as she exited her isolation room. His first and only words to her as she stood waiting expectantly before him were an order to go fetch her rucksack and meet him down at the athletic track.

While most, if not all of her friends might have been appalled by such a seemingly callous and insensitive attitude, nothing could have made Melanie happier than that simple command. To her, it meant that he intended to put the entire incident behind them and move on with her normal training. He had no intention of treating her any differently, as if she were some kind of diseased invalid that needed to be taken care of and looked after.

That entire first day out of the hospital passed smoothly and without incident. She even managed to earn a curt nod of approval from Jacob when she managed to fire off two full clips from her rifle in less than thirteen seconds while still managing to plant every single round dead-center in the targets.

The best surprise by far, however, came at the end of the day, as Melanie was cleaning up the gym. She and Jacob had just finished another self-defence and hand-to-hand combat training session and the pair was moving the various mats and pads strewn about back into the storage closet.

She knew that something strange was going on by the fact that Jacob had called an end to the session almost and hour early. At first, Melanie was scared that he _was_ in fact treating her differently because of her breakdown and that he no longer trusted her to be able to keep up.

Afraid of what the answer might be, but still wanting to know the reason behind the early dismissal, Melanie cautiously asked Jacob why. "I've spent the last two days doing nothing by lying in bed, resting. I feel fine Jacob; I can keep going."

"I don't doubt that, Melanie," Jacob replied, easing some of the tension tightening Melanie's shoulders and back. "But I have a field training exercise lined up for you tomorrow and I have a few things we need to go over before you go to bed."

Melanie gaped mutely, surprise and pleasure flitting through her. Field training? That meant they were going somewhere off compound. This would be her first opportunity to set foot outside the agency's grounds.

She struggled and failed to conceal the broad, ecstatic grin from spreading across her face and her eyes gleamed with unveiled joy. "What…what kind of field training?" Melanie asked hesitantly. Her whole body trembled with the effort of retaining some semblance of composure.

"You'll find out tomorrow," was all he would say on the matter.

Silently she made her way out of the gym, following close behind Jacob. Together they made their way over to the handlers' dorms. While it was still early by Melanie's standards, it was fully dark out as she made her way across the spacious lawns. A heavy layer of flat, slat-grey clouds obscured the moon and stars, deepening the evening gloom to nigh-impenetrable darkness. Widely spaced wrought-iron street-lamps flanked the flagstone walking paths. The broad pools of yellowed light they cast across the grounds pointed the way to anyone still out and about.

The multitude of brightly shining lights from the large, blocky governmental-style building that was Section Two's headquarters – where the handlers' dormitory was located – twinkled in the distance and seemed to have taken the place of the starry sky as a comfortable beacon of navigation.

Inside, Melanie ogled the rich wood panelling that adorned the walls and fanciful wrought-iron electric sconces that provided illumination along the narrow hallways. While she had been inside the main floor of the building, where the main office spaces of Section Two's support staff and data analysts worked, this was her first time setting foot within the upper floors, which were reserved for the agency's handlers. Simple, utilitarian suites were provided to every handler to use as a combination office and crash-pad, in the event they were either unable or unwilling to go home at the end of the day.

Stopping beside Jacob just outside his rooms, Melanie waited patiently for him to unlock and open the door. Excitement bubbled up inside her as she followed him inside. The privilege of being allowed inside her handler's dorm suite was a momentous event for Melanie and she would be sure to tell her friends about it as soon as she got back to the cyborg dorms.

Stepping into a sparsely-furnished sitting room, Melanie turned all about, head swivelling in the effort to take everything in. Two plain oak doors faced her from the opposite side of the room. One led to the bedroom, the other to a simple two-piece lavatory.

The walls were painted a rick, dark beige and textured slightly so that it almost resembled crinkled parchment. Immediately in front of her, a small wooden diner-style table sat pushed up against the wall with three chairs tucked in around it. To her right were a leather sofa and a matching chair, arranged in an arc in front of a wide-screen flat-panel television. Two bookcases set between the doors to the bedroom and bathroom were the only other furnishings.

"Wait here," Jacob said gruffly before slipping into the bedroom.

Taking the opportunity to look around more closely, Melanie stepped up to the bookcases to inspect what kinds of books her handler preferred. Hoping to find something she could use to start forming a common interest with Jacob, she gave a quick look over the rather limited collection of tomes.

Most of the books she found were of a distinctly academic kind. Procedural manuals and training handbooks made up the bulk of what was on display. The scant few novels all seemed to be war stories and spy thrillers. There were several books written by a man named 'Tom Clancy' that, when Melanie pulled one out to glance at the cover, looked interesting.

Running her hands along the book, Melanie felt an electric thrill of excitement tingle up her spine and she repressed the sudden urge to sigh wistfully. With the way Jacob acted towards her both in public and in private, she would never have imagined that she would be standing in his private rooms, holding one of his private possessions.

Part of her was appalled at such flakey, moon-eyed behaviour. A week ago Melanie was ready to run crying to the doctors and beg them to imprint her to a new handler. But now, here she stood, as weak-kneed and light-headed as a silly little girl who had just been kissed by her first crush.

Footsteps approaching from within the bedroom alerted Melanie to Jacob's return and she hastily stuffed the novel back in place and stepped away from the bookcase. She was both pleased and honoured at being invited into Jacob's suite; it would not do to be caught rifling through his things.

Melanie's heart leapt into her throat and her stomach gave a sickening lurch as Jacob stepped back into the sitting room with the army-green rucksack clutched tightly in one hand, two cylindrical canvas bundles in the other.

Seeing the look of trepidation on her face, all colour drained out of it, Jacob gave a tiny sniff of amusement and cracked a faint grin. "Relax; I took the weights out." Melanie did relax visibly, sucking in a deep breath and letting it out in a sigh of relief.

Reaching out to take the bag when offered to her, Melanie blinked in curious surprise at the unfamiliar rattling from inside the main pouch. Opening up the rucksack to peer within, she found a yellow plastic plate, bowl and cup, as well as a three-piece utensil set that all clipped together.

"That is your mess kit," Jacob explained calmly. "We're going to be heading up to Stelvio National Park tomorrow and since we might end up spending the night, you need to learn how to pack your gear."

"We're going camping?" Melanie asked, perking up at the prospect of getting to spend not only an entire day alone with Jacob, but also being able to spend the night with him as well.

"Maybe," Jacob muttered curtly, glaring. "But that's only if things don't go so well. I hope to be back by sometime after supper tomorrow evening. Now pay attention.

"The plate goes in that thin sleeve inside the main pouch, up against the frame. The cup goes inside the bowl and…"

Melanie listened carefully, nodding her understanding and carrying out Jacob's commands of where everything went swiftly and precisely. When she was done, he had set the rucksack aside and tossed over the bundled sack.

Inside, Melanie found a four-piece Arctic-Weather sleeping bag. In the smaller sack was a thin air mattress. Jacob explained that when all four pieces: outer and inner bags, fleece liner and insulated hood were used they would keep her warm in temperatures as low as forty degrees below freezing.

Jacob showed her how, in order to save time, to simply stuff the sleeping bag back into the canvas sack. He explained that doing so would also help it dry and prevent creases from forming in the fabric, which could compromise performance. He had her unpack, set up and repack the sleeping bag several dozen times until he was certain that she could do it quickly even while half-asleep and in pitch-darkness.

When they were finally finished, Jacob had her strap the bundled sleeping bag and thin air mattress to the bottom of the rucksack. With one last order to pack at least two full changes of clothes before she went to bed, Jacob sent Melanie off. Biding her handler a good-night, Melanie made her way back to the cyborg dormitory.

She crossed the stretch of yard quickly, the sheen of sweat that had now had a chance to dry to her skin making Melanie shiver in the damp chill of the spring air. The thought of a long hot shower beckoned to her, pulling at each step until she was practically running towards her goal.

The sound of muted chatter filtered out from several nearby dorm rooms as Melanie pushed through the wide double doors into the building. She could hear cheerful, good-natured shouting and the blare of music coming from the direction of the second floor common room.

Stopping at her room to drop off the rucksack, Melanie found Lucretia at her computer, completely engrossed in whatever game she was playing. The sounds of gunfire, explosions and the agonized screams of the dying filled the air. The girl herself was muttering under her breath, too low for Melanie to make out any words over the cacophonous roar of the game.

"Hey Lucy," Melanie called cheerfully, receiving only an unintelligible grunt in response. Grinning and rolling her eyes at her room-mate's obsessive fixation, Melanie gave a soft chuckle as she closed the door behind her.

Stepping into the brightly-lit changing room, Melanie was relieved to find that the only occupants were a pair of girls she didn't recognize by name. Both were just finished getting dressed and on their way out.

Nodding in greeting to both girls as they passed, Melanie strode forward deeper into the changing room and eased herself down onto on of the long wooden benches. Revelling in the feeling of having her weight finally off of her feet, Melanie took a moment to relax and savour the quiet solitude.

She didn't mind having to shower alongside her fellow cyborgs, but it did make her decidedly uncomfortable. Each time she stepped into the shower room while there were others in there, it was a constant battle to keep herself from blushing from head to toe and to keep the waves of nervous nausea from overwhelming her. This seeming shyness and self-consciousness had earned Melanie considerable light-hearted teasing from Lucretia, but to Melanie's eternal relief, her room mate had the good sense to keep the secret between just the two of them.

Half-an-hour later, Melanie padded softly and quickly through the hallways of the dormitory, the hem of her fluffy, cream-coloured bathrobe flapping wildly around her ankles. Her bare feet made muted wet slapping sounds against the tiled floor, the chilly ceramic sending shivers running up Melanie's spine at each step.

Between the cold floor under her feet and the cool air whispering against her wet skin, Melanie was spurred on to a hurried, almost frenzied pace. She was eagerly looking forward to not only the warmth, but also the familiar comfort of sleeping in her own bed again.

Slipping through the door into her dorm room, Melanie was immediately met by a vicious stream of vehement cursing from Lucretia, directed at her computer monitor. The slim, almost diminutive girl growled and muttered incoherently and each new stream of expletives was punctuated by a loud, crashing bang as Lucretia hammered her fists against the top of the desk.

"What the Hell is going on Lucy? Are you okay?" Melanie hazarded, understandably worried that, if Lucretia kept on, she would end up putting her fists clear through the desk.

"No, I am _not_ okay Melanie!" Lucretia snapped without glancing away from the screen. "This stupid little punk just fucking _cheesed_ me! God-damned bastard threw down a proxy-gate behind my third and zealot-rushed me. Stupid little cheap-ass newbie!"

Melanie stared blankly at the back of her room mate's head. Her face was frozen in a wooden mask of silent confusion. "Uh…I have no idea what that means."

"It means that this dumb-shit punk, who has no _fucking_ clue how to properly play this game, thought he would be a funny little smart-ass and pull out a lame, gimmicky strategy, which is _obviously_ the only way he can ever win in a match, and then beats me with it!" Lucretia snarled venomously. Her voice and body both trembled with the force of the seething rage searing through her veins.

"Wow, calm down Lucy; it's just a game," Melanie said soothingly. Changing into her pyjamas, she tossed her bathrobe over the back of one of the three chairs positioned evenly around the small round table in the center of the room.

There was a resounding _crack_ of wood splintering and shattering, causing Melanie to jump in alarm. Twirling around, she took an involuntary step back at the sight of Lucretia glaring murderously at her.

"It is _not._ Just. A game," Lucretia hissed fiercely. Her eyes flashed with savage, animalistic fury. "This is a contest of willpower, determination and strategic thinking. It requires lightning-fast decision-making and precision control. Or at least it's _supposed_ to.

"I'm an eighty-three million Euro combat cyborg. It shouldn't even be _possible_ for me to loose."

"Well maybe you just underestimated him," Melanie suggested. "I mean, didn't Triela get her butt kicked by Major Sales because she didn't take him seriously?"

Lucretia fumed and fidgeted in her seat. She grumbled quietly to herself, averting her gaze. "Yeah well, it's not going to matter if I did or not; because once I'm done with this punk, he's going to be _begging_ me for death!" With those vengeful words, Lucretia spun back to her computer and began dancing her fingers across the keyboard with blistering speed.

"What the hell does that mean?" Melanie asked. A warning tingle of dread rolled up her spine and she rushed forward to Lucretia's side. Her room mate's gaze was glued to the computer screen and Melanie saw a long flood of garbled gibberish streaming down as Lucretia's fingers rattled across the keys. "Lucy, what are you doing?"

"I'm hacking this dumb little newbie's computer, that's what. We'll see how he likes getting a steaming pile of melted processor as payment for his cheap-ass strategies."

Melanie's eyes bulged wide and she lunged forward, hands snapping out to lock around Lucretia's wrists and pull her away from the computer. "What? Are you insane Lucy? You can't hack this guy's computer just because he beat you. He's probably like some twelve year old kid just having fun and you're going to destroy his computer?"

"I don't care," Lucretia cried, pouting and struggling in Melanie's grasp. "The little bastard beat me and _nobody_ beats me and he needs to pay!"

"Lucy, stop it!" Melanie barked angrily. "You're acting like a three year-old throwing a hissy fit!"

Finally Lucretia seemed to calm down. At least, she stopped thrashing around like some wild animal. "Okay fine; you win. I won't melt his processor."

Not entirely trusting this sudden turn-around in her friend, Melanie spun Lucretia around in her chair so that she could look the other girl in the eye. She still didn't slacken her hold on Lucretia's wrists, either. "You promise to leave him alone completely? No hacking his computer at all?"

"Yes, I promise," Lucretia snapped indignantly. Her face blushed bright red both in anger and embarrassment. Anger at the idea that Melanie didn't trust her without a solemn vow; embarrassment at knowing that Melanie was probably right not to.

"Thank you," Melanie said, finally releasing Lucretia, who immediately began rubbing at her wrists. "So what are you going to do about your desk?"

Glancing down to where Melanie was indicating with one hand, Lucretia saw that, in her blind anger and frustration, she had punched both fists clear through the thick, high density fibreboard desktop. Cracks in the cherry-wood veneer spider-webbed outwards from the twin impacts for several inches.

Lucretia frowned at the sight, mentally berating herself for losing her temper. "I guess I'll have to get the Q-Branch crew to make me a new one," she said after some time of staring silently at the mess.

"They're not going to have to replace the whole desk, are they?" Melanie asked worriedly. With all of the custom modifications the technology department had put into the desk, she was certain that they would be more than slightly upset at Lucretia having trashed it in a fit of rage.

"Oh no, of course not," Lucretia said mildly in assurance. "The desktop is only held on by a set of steel pegs and pops right off."

Melanie stared down at her friend, face set in an expression of careful, blank neutrality. Lucretia stared back up at her with a kind of wide-eyed innocence that set off warning bells in Melanie's mind. She had a creeping suspicion that she knew the reason behind that particular modification. She wisely chose not to press the issue.

It was only then, now that she had finally calmed down, that Lucretia realized that Melanie shouldn't even have been back from her evening training session yet. When she asked about it, Melanie's face instantly lit up in a broad grin, eyes sparkling with excitement.

"Jacob let me go so that I could go to bed early. He's taking me on a field trip tomorrow!"

Lucretia felt her eyebrows lift with incongruous amazement. Jacob was taking her somewhere off compound? Jacob? "Wow, that's great Melanie. Congratulations. This will be your first time leaving the agency grounds, won't it?" Lucretia managed to set aside shock and scepticism long enough to offer her friend genuine delight at the apparent change in fortunes.

"Yeah, it will. Jacob says it's some kind of field training exercise. I'm so excited; I don't know if I'm even going to be _able_ to sleep."

Lucretia found herself staring at Melanie blankly, despite her best efforts to the contrary. Field training exercise? Now _that_ sounded more like Jacob. "Well as long as you're happy about it Melanie, I'm glad."

A sudden thought wriggled up from the back of Lucretia's mind and she groaned softly. Letting her head fall back limply, Lucretia reached up to rub at her eyes with the heels of both hands. "Actually, it's a good thing Jacob _did_ send you back early. You just reminded me that I should go to bed early too."

"Why? What do you and Enzo have going on tomorrow?" Melanie asked idly while removing several shirts and pairs of pants from the dresser at the foot of her bed. She piled the stack of garments neatly within the main pouch of her rucksack. In one of the side pouches, she packed a few changes of underwear and several pairs of socks. Pausing to think for a moment, Melanie then packed a few more pairs of socks in the opposite side pouch.

"We're heading up north to help Kara and Petra with their mission," Lucretia said in explanation, stretching her arms up over her head. "Sandro called in earlier today and said that he might secure a meeting with the arms-dealer they're tracking within the next couple of days." With one last, lingering look of regret, Lucretia reluctantly shut down her computer and pulled herself away.

"They need three _fratellos_ just to grab one guy?" Melanie said incredulously, flipping back the thick down comforter and thin wool blanket on her bed and climbing in. She shifted around until she was comfortable and turned to face Lucretia.

"Jean thinks this guy is pretty important, so he doesn't want any chance of him slipping away. When the time comes to actually grab him, there'll be even more of us there. Costante and Nina are on standby and chances are Jean will be on-site with Rico to personally oversee things from the front lines."

"Wow; that sounds really cool Lucy," Melanie exclaimed wondrously. Try as she might, a small knot of jealousy managed to lodge itself deep within Melanie's head. It was unimaginably disheartening to watch her friends go off on missions while she was stuck back at the compound, training. Melanie prayed that this new training exercise, whatever it was, would help prove to Jean and Chief Lorenzo that she was almost ready to start going on missions of her own.

Melanie abruptly twisted back around in bed as Lucretia stripped out of her jeans and long-sleeved black shirt. She was glad for the cover of darkness that her blankets provided as it hid the faint blush of colour seeping into her cheeks. Thankfully, if Lucretia noticed Melanie's avoiding her gaze as she changed into her pyjamas, then she didn't remark upon it.

Lucretia simply scoffed at Melanie's remark though, snorting derisively. "Cool? Not even close Melanie. The only reason Enzo and I are going tomorrow is to relieve Michele and Kara, who have been manning the surveillance station for the past four days."

"So?" Melanie asked, confused at her friend's scorn.

"So that means Enzo and I will be stuck in some dingy little apartment or hotel room with our faces glued to a bunch of surveillance equipment for twelve hours at a time. Can you even _begin_ to imagine how boring that is?" Lucretia pouted slightly, her indignation compounded by her lingering resentments over losing her match.

Her face brightened then as a sudden thought struck her and she let out a slight giggle of amusement. "Of course, knowing Michele and Kara's standards, the term 'dingy' is likely to simply mean that the bed-sheets aren't made of hand-woven silk and the in-house chef isn't Michelin Star qualified."

"Well, you _are_ a computer surveillance expert Lucy. I would have thought you'd be happy to do what you're good at," Melanie said in the hope that some mild flattery would ease her friend's bitterness.

"Oh I don't mind the actual surveillance work," Lucretia exclaimed as she slid under the covers of her own bed. "It's the fact that, despite what Sandro said, it could be a week or more before we get the chance to grab this guy. All that time cooped up in just a couple of rooms with nothing to do but work, eat and sleep is enough to make me want to blow my brains out.

"The fact that we'll be working in collaboration with Sandro and Petra doesn't exactly help either," Lucretia muttered darkly at the end.

"I didn't know you had a…a problem with Petra and Alessandro," Melanie said, pausing in mid-sentence as a deep yawn interrupted her.

"Oh, I don't. At least, not in moderation," Lucretia replied quickly, words tumbling out in her rush to clarify her position. "Petra is nice and great to have around in small doses. But too much of her in too short a span of time and she can be unbelievably annoying.

"Sandro, on the other hand," Lucretia continued, her voice lowered to almost a growl, "Is a creepy pervert. Every time I'm around him, it feels like he's trying to undress me with his eyes. He's almost as bad as Amadeo."

"What? That's crazy Lucy," Melanie decried, astounded that her friend could think something like that of another handler. "I like Sandro. He's funny and charming and he's never been anything but professional when I've been around him."

"Yeah well, just wait until the first time he tries to feel you up. You'll think differently then," Lucretia grumbled darkly.

Melanie elected to remain silent rather than keep arguing. She could recognize that Lucretia was in a mood where attempting to do so would only have the both of them going in circles and yelling at each other all night long.

After a while, Lucretia gave a slow, wearied sigh and went on. "All I can say is: thank God Kara's going to be there. She should be able to keep me and Petra from wanting to claw each other's eyes out."

"I suppose."

A deep, jaw-cracking yawn was Lucretia's cue that it was probably a good idea to turn in. Grabbing her MP3 player off the desk, she popped the ear-buds into her ears and hit the 'Play' button. The softly throbbing, soothing melodies of a meditative, ambient techno mix drifted into Lucretia's ears and swept through her, instantly causing every muscle in her body to relax.

"Night Mel," Lucretia said simply, reaching over to flick off the desk-top lamp that was the only illumination in the room, plunging the two girls into darkness.

"Good night Lucy."

Melanie rolled over in bed, wrapping the blankets around herself until she was tightly cocooned within. Finally she gave in to her exhaustion and allowed it to drag her down into unconsciousness. She was fast asleep in seconds.

* * *

It seemed to Melanie that she had just fallen asleep when a firm hand on her shoulder was shaking her awake. She jerked upright in bed with a muffled cry of alarm and blinked dazedly into the pale, pre-dawn gloom. There came a harshly whispered admonishment from Jacob, who she found hovering over her, warning Melanie to be quiet.

"Jacob, it's only four in the morning; what are you doing here?" Melanie whined, checking the small electric clock perched on her bedside table.

"We've got an hour drive ahead of us followed by a two hour flight," Jacob whispered harshly. "Now get up and be quiet."

Glancing over, she could just make out the humped, huddled form of Lucretia across the room. One bare foot poked out from under the covers and dangled off the edge of the mattress. The slow, steady breathing coming from the other girl told Melanie that she was still sound asleep. Grumbling under her breath, she nodded her understanding to Jacob, who stepped back silently.

Her hair was a snarled, tangled mess that hung wildly in every direction. Several locks were plastered to her sweat-slicked face. Melanie squirmed irritably as one long strand tickled at her nose and she stubbornly repressed the sudden urge to sneeze.

Struggling to free her arms, which were pinned to her sides by the tightly-wrapped blankets, Melanie eventually managed to pop one hand out of its woven encasement and raked the hair away from her face.

Stifling a yawn behind that same hand, she began the long and complicated process of extricating herself from her blankets. Melanie tried to ignore Jacob's impatient growl but she still almost ended up tumbling herself onto the floor because of how flustered and nervous he was making her.

Her face burning bright red, the colour staining her cheeks blessedly hidden in the shadowy pre-dawn gloom, Melanie finally scrambled free and hopped out of bed. Jacob handed her a pair of low-top black hiking boots. He gave her curt instructions to get dressed and, advising that she dress in something warm, to meet him in the cafeteria.

Melanie bobbed her head in mute compliance and stood staring at Jacob's back as he slipped out of the room.

Moving swiftly, Melanie peeled off her sweat-dampened pyjamas and pulled on a fresh, clean set of underwear. She selected a heavier burgundy long-sleeved shirt and plain black t-shirt to wear, along with a pair of dark blue, fleece-lined jeans. She topped off the ensemble with a just slightly oversized wool sweater.

Pulling on first a pair of thin mesh-fabric athletic socks and then a pair of heavier green wool ones, Melanie sat down on the edge of her bed to put on the brand new boots. She felt a thrill of pride and delight as she held one of the boots out in front of her, inspecting every tiny detail. Jacob had bought her something. They were hers, and no-one else's. The boots were her very first presents from her handler.

Melanie giggled quietly with glee as she slipped her feet inside. The boots virtually moulded themselves to every contour of her foot and were both snug and comfortable from thickly-padded heel to steel-capped toe. Tightening up and tying the laces, she stood and paced back and forth across the room several times to test them out.

Satisfied with the way the boots fit, Melanie grabbed a light wind-breaker from the wardrobe and put it on. The back, shoulders and sides of the coat were black, with the front and undersides of the arms a lighter grey. Navy-blue piping ran along the edges of the panels, separating the two colours.

Slinging her rucksack over one shoulder, Melanie silently tip-toed to the door and slipped out into the hallway. She virtually ran through the halls and down the stairs, nearly colliding with a bleary-eyed Alba. The slim, freckle-faced red-head jumped back hastily with a strangled curse and just barely succeeded in preventing herself from toppling over backwards, onto the floor.

Melanie called out apologetically to her fellow cyborg, who was too tired and lazy to do more than cast a slit-eyed glare at Melanie's retreating back and grumble under her breath.

Pulling herself up short and slowing down outside the cafeteria, Melanie gave herself a few moments to collect herself. Sucking in several deep breaths, she reached out and pushed her way through the wide steel double-doors.

At this early hour, only half the lights in the cafeteria were turned on, lending a much softer, more intimate glow to the large hall. A few cooks and kitchen staff bustled behind the serving counter, bringing out broad metal trays and deep-set pans full of freshly cooked food in preparation for breakfast.

The men and women worked quickly and quietly; the few words that were spoken between them were in soft whispers. There was a smooth economy to their movements in the way they seemed to flow around one another without ever getting in each others' way, that hinted at many long hours of practice.

Casting a quick glance around the dimly-lit cafeteria, Melanie quickly spotted Jacob seated at the table immediately to her right, nearest to the buffet line. There were only a few select food items on the row of tables, mostly various types of cereals and freshly-baked breads that filled the immediate area with a strong, tantalizing scent that set Melanie's mouth to watering.

Striding over, Melanie saw that Jacob already had a bowl of steaming-hot oatmeal, two thick slices of lightly-toasted bread smothered in butter and strawberry jam and a tall glass of juice waiting for her. He didn't look up as she sat down in the seat opposite him and began to dig into the meal.

"How do the boots fit?" he asked gruffly, pulling Melanie's attention up from her oatmeal. She glanced over at him but he was still staring down into his own bowl, spoon working back and forth quickly and methodically.

"They fit perfectly," Melanie replied happily. "They're great Jacob, I love them; thank you so much."

Now Jacob did flick a brief look across the table at her, one thick eyebrow lifted quizzically. "They're just boots Melanie; don't get all weepy on me."

"They're the first things you've ever bought me Jacob," Melanie argued softly, feeling herself once more beginning to blush. "That makes them special."

He fixed her with a flat, level glare and Melanie felt her face burning hotter under the intense scrutiny.

Finally, after a seeming eternity, Jacob broke the gaze, lowering his eyes back down to his bowl and grumbled half-under his breath. "Fine, whatever." The rest of their quick meal was eaten in silence, some of Melanie's exuberance and excitement dampened by Jacob's gruff attitude. When they were both finished eating, they carried their empty dishes over to the serving counter and, after dropping them off, headed out to the agency parking lot.

The cloud-cover had begun to break up at some point during the night, leaving a mottled patchwork of pale grey-blue sky showing through the breaks in the low ceiling. The sun was just beginning to show over the long, low ranges of the Apennine Mountains, staining the undersides of the clouds there in brilliant shades of orange and pink.

Despite the clearing weather, the air was still cold and damp as the pair strode purposefully across the cobblestones towards Jacob's car. Only a few other vehicles were in the lot at this early hour. Most of them belonged to the night-shift support staff and a small handful of handlers who had elected to sleep at the agency rather than go home.

The presence of Jean's two-door Mercedes came as no surprise. The man rarely left the agency for anything more than a change of clothes. What _was_ a surprise was the fact that Elio's white BMW M3 coupe was also in the lot. He normally rode in with Lorenzo in his chauffeured Bentley.

The older man had just arrived, as he climbed out of his car just as Jacob and Melanie were passing by. The two men nodded wordlessly to each other in greeting. Elio spared a second nod for Melanie, who nodded and waved in return.

Stopping up beside Jacob's rebuilt Oldsmobile, Melanie waited patiently as her handler popped the trunk. Jacob's backpack was already nestled inside and Melanie placed her own pack in beside it.

Climbing into the passenger seat, Melanie felt her stomach flutter with excitement. She clicked her seatbelt into place as Jacob started the motor. The deep, resonant rumble of the muscle car's big-block eight cylinder engine filled the air. A faint vibration rippled up Melanie's body and within only minutes of Jacob's throwing the vehicle into gear and starting to pull out of the parking-lot, the steady tremble started to lull her back to sleep. She fought doggedly to keep from passing out, but it was a battle that Melanie knew she had little chance of winning.

Jacob noticed Melanie's struggle with no small amount of genuine amusement. He flicked his gaze back and forth, watching for a time as, every few minutes her head would slowly sink down to her chest before bobbing back up sharply.

Jacob pulled onto the long, back-country road that led from the agency grounds to the small rural town of Balsorano, nestled on the Western slopes of the Central Apennines. The road was narrow; only one lane and it forced Jacob to keep to a slow, relaxed pace. The rolling hills flanking the road were lined with dense thickets of juniper and buckthorn, interspersed with the occasional stand of beech trees.

Even though the road was paved, there were still large sections where the shifting ground beneath and simple neglect had caused the pale asphalt to crack and settle into uneven lumps. With the stiffened suspension that his car sported, the vehicle bounced and rocked noticeably over each bump.

Not for the first time since joining the SWA, Jacob sent up silent thanks to the technological department for the plush leather racing seats they had installed, which cushioned each jarring impact to tolerable levels. Jacob also spared a moment to offer pitying thoughts to the Ferraris and Lamborghinis that Michele drove. There were a few places where the humping was bad enough that it would take a miracle of skilful manoeuvring to keep from bottoming out.

There had been some talk bandied around a couple of years back about the notion of having the whole stretch of road overhauled: the pavement torn up, the road widened and repaved, in order to facilitate easier access and faster deployment. The idea had been quickly shot down by Lorenzo. The presence of a large-scale training complex complete with outdoor firing ranges provided a big enough satellite footprint as it was; there was no need to make themselves any more noticeable than they already were.

After several minutes the rugged access road merged onto the slightly less rugged backcountry streets and the drive became significantly smoother.

Jacob glanced over at Melanie, who was staring out the window with avid fascination at the countryside. Nearing the town of Balsorano as they were, the landscape began to flatten out, the semi-arid Italian macchia vegetation slowly giving way to centuries-old homes set far back from the road. Most properties were surrounded by waist-high crumbling brick and stucco walls, the yards dotted with ancient stands of juniper, holly oak and olive trees.

Before long, they were entering the outskirts of Balsorano proper, the homes coming closer and closer together until they were driving through actual neighbourhoods. The road widened to two lanes and the pair passed the occasional resident on their way to work.

Melanie's desire to take in all these new surroundings warred with the tiredness that dragged at her eyelids. She rubbed doggedly at her eyes, determined not to spend her very first excursion away from the agency passed out in the passenger seat of Jacob's car.

"You can sleep if you want to Melanie," Jacob said suddenly while navigating through the narrow downtown streets. "We've got just over an hour's drive down to Pratica di Mare Air Force Base."

Melanie shook her head stubbornly in denial. Pouting slightly, she folded her arms across her chest and stared defiantly out the window. She stated simply, "I don't want to miss anything."

"We're in the heart of rural Italy Melanie; there's nothing to see that you're going to miss."

"That's not true," Melanie exclaimed in retort, turning back to face her handler. "This is the _real world_ Jacob! And it's my first time being out in it." She paused, thinking quickly and added, "Every little bit I see could be valuable research information that I can use to help blend in when we're out on a mission."

Jacob rolled his eyes and shook his head exasperatedly. "It's only twenty-after-four in the morning Melanie, there's practically _no-one_ around to watch. And unless we're sent to take out a Padania-run _farming_ operation, you're not going to learn anything valuable from observing the people around here."

Not willing to give in so easily and feeling slightly petulant, Melanie gave a soft "harrumph" and twisted around in her seat to stare fixatedly out the window. She would _not_ fall asleep!

Less than ten minutes later, as Jacob pulled onto State Highway six-ninety heading North-West, Melanie was sound asleep; leaning up against the door, cheek resting delicately on her shoulder. Arms tightly crossed, elbow braced against the sculpted carbon-fibre door panel, Melanie's lips were still set in a softly pouting frown.

Glancing over at her sleep form and chuckling to himself in wry amusement, Jacob reached out and turned a dial in the center of the dash, sending a gentle flow of warm air blowing back into Melanie's face, ruffling her red-gold hair. She let out a soft mumble and shifted around in her seat, snuggling in tighter.

Bringing his attention back to the road before him, Jacob gave the eight-cylinder Cutlass a quick burst of gas to rev the engine. The deep, rattling rumble responded instantly in a barking roar and he clutched in while simultaneously downshifting into third. Releasing the clutch, he put increasing pressure in the accelerator and felt himself pressed back into his seat as the nearly two thousand kilogram machine surged forward.

The speedometer inched its way up past one hundred and eighty kilometres per hour within seconds. The noise from the engine continued to increase in intensity until it was an almost demonic, leonine bellow filling the air.

The needle on the tachometer just tickled along the outermost edge of the redline zone and Jacob snapped his foot off the gas, clutched in and shifted up into fourth. Without missing a single beat he clutched back out and hammered his foot back down in the gas.

Jacob's pulse pounded hard and fast inside his chest. The blood roared in his ears with a force to drown out the sound of the car. He could feel his body vibrating as adrenaline surged through his veins.

Two-twenty, two-thirty, two-forty. The trees and hills running along either side of the highway were an indistinct blur in Jacob's peripheral vision. The speedometer hit two-hundred and fifty kilometres an hour and his snapped the car into fifth.

Each breath came in small, short gasps. His knuckles were turning white from the convulsive grip on the black leather-wrapped steering wheel. A deep primal thrill, almost sexual in its intensity, coursed through Jacob's system. Every single nerve-ending in his body tingled as if an electric current was running just beneath the skin.

The highway twisted and undulated gently with the contours of the land, cutting through the verdant mountain valleys of the Apennines. All of a sudden though, up ahead the highway flattened out into a five kilometre long straight stretch. The road ahead devoid of traffic of any kind, Jacob felt his lips peel back in a feral grin.

Tightening his death-grip on the wheel with his left hand, he reached down blindly with his right. Feeling around the lower portion of the center console, Jacob found and flipped one of two small metal toggle switches before slamming the transmission into its sixth and final gear. A tiny red light blinked on and, returning both hands to the wheel, he jabbed a thumb into the matching red button set atop the middle of the steering wheel.

With a sharp hiss of escaping gas, the roar of the engine reached a howling crescendo. The pitch and tone rose to that of a Hellish banshee wail and the vehicle exploded forward in a spine-wrenching burst of power.

Jacob could feel sweat popping out across his face, neck and arms as the needle on the speedometer flashed by the two-eighty mark and kept climbing. The entire car began to rattle and shake from the excessive speed and each miniscule ripple in the pavement became a mountainous furrow that threatened to send the two-tonne machine skidding out of control.

The needle hit and buried itself at the three-hundred and twenty kilometres per hour mark and Jacob held that speed for an agonizingly slow forty seconds. That was all the time it took to completely chew through the entire five kilometre straight stretch.

Easing off the gas pedal a fraction of an inch at a time, Jacob allowed the car to coast back down to a more reasonable one-hundred and seventy kilometres per hour rather than actively apply the breaks.

As the car settled into cruising speed, the engine deepening into a steady, rumbling growl, Jacob took his first full breath in what seemed a lifetime. It came out in a long, shuddering gasp that left him trembling weakly. He was slicked with sweat from head to toe and he could feel his heart jack-hammering inside his chest.

"What's going on?" Melanie asked sleepily, straightening in her seat and rubbing at her eyes.

"Nothing," Jacob stated flatly, feeling himself flush faintly. "Go back to sleep."

Frowning, Melanie grumbled indignantly in denial, "What do you mean 'go back to sleep?' I wasn't sleeping. I told you: I don't want to miss _anything_.

"So what _were_ you doing?" she asked again, pressing him incessantly.

"Cleaning the injectors," he growled irritatedly, hoping to put her off with something suitably vague and mundane-sounding. When Melanie failed to respond, Jacob risked a quick glance and found her staring at him with wide-eyed astonishment.

"What?" he barked out harshly, his fierce scowl daring her to comment.

Melanie grinned slyly, her amber eyes gleaming mischievously. "I didn't know you were into racing, Jacob."

"The hell are you talking about Melanie?" Jacob demanded, a mixture of anger and embarrassment making his voice crack unsteadily. "I said I was cleaning the injectors."

Melanie's grin broadened and she shot back smugly, "Jacob, I spend most of my down-time with Allison and Kara. I know what "cleaning the injectors" means."

"Then it sounds to me as if you have too much down-time," Jacob retorted sharply, eliciting a pained wince from the suddenly not-so-smug girl. She wisely chose not to respond to that comment and shifted her focus back to the window and the rolling landscape beyond.

The pair rode in silence for the remainder of the drive down to Pratica di Mare Air Force Base. After ten minutes of awkward quiet, Jacob turned on the radio and threw in a CD. Leaning back in his seat, Jacob settled in for the drive with a faint smile on his face.

His head started bobbing, thumbs tapping the steering wheel in time to the beat the moment to first hollow clang of a cow-bell issued forth from the speakers. The drum-line kicked in a few seconds later, followed by the iconic opening guitar riff of Nazareth's 'Hair of the Dog'. He silently mouthed along to the first verse, pointedly ignoring Melanie's slightly slack-jawed stare of incredulous bewilderment as the song broke into the main chorus.

'_Now you're messin__g with a…_

_A son-of-a-bitch!_

_Now you're messing with a son-of-a-bitch!_

_Now you're messing with a…_

_A son-of-a-bitch!_

_Now you're messing with a son-of-a-bitch!'_

The CD rolled through various other hard-rock classics of the seventies and eighties, Hair of the Dog followed by Led Zeppelin's 'Immigrant Song' and The Who's 'Baba O'Riley'. By the time the harsh, rasping vocals of Brian Johnson were blasting out the main chorus of 'Thunderstruck', even Melanie found herself bobbing and tapping in time to the beat. Afterwards the songs mellowed out, starting with the slow, haunting melodies of 'Comfortably Numb' by Pink Floyd, followed up by Nazareth's 'Please Don't Judas Me'.

Jacob pulled off of the Via Pratica di Mare almost an hour later, stopping in front of the main security gate leading onto the airbase just as the notes of Alice Cooper's 'Hey Stoopid' were fading away. He flashed his agency-supplied credentials to the slouching, bleary-eyed guardsman on duty. The man smothered a yawn behind one hand while he gave the I.D. a cursory glance and waved Jacob through. Shaking his head at the blatant lack of discipline and fixing the oblivious guard with a disapproving glower, Jacob rolled through the open gate into the main parking lot.

Located some twenty kilometres south of the Circonvallazione Meridionale, the southern portion of the perimeter ring of expressways that encircled most of metropolitan Rome, Pratica di Mare was comprised of several airstrips used exclusively by the Italian air force. The largest of Italy's dedicated military airfields, it served mostly as a transportation hub, shipping troops and supplies east to Afghanistan and Iraq. At just over a kilometre away from the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea, it also served as a major dispatch center for Search and Rescue operations in Western Italy.

A few days ago, Jacob had sought out major Sales, the commanding officer of the GIS commando detachment used by the agency to train the cyborgs in specialized combat roles and basic hand-to-hand fighting. After explaining to the major what he was looking to do, Jacob had managed to secure the use of a transport helicopter to fly him and Melanie north.

Navigating through the sprawling military compound, Jacob made his way down to the airfield. The various sprawling headquarters buildings, maintenance hangers, supply depots and barracks were set amongst spacious swaths of greenery. Each cluster of buildings was separated from the next by a broad stretch of grass with widely-spaced stands of trees to provide shade. Almost everywhere he looked, there were picnic tables set amid the trees where soldiers could relax, eat and talk between shifts and duties.

Jacob parked outside the hanger bay used for the storage and maintenance of several of the various models of helicopters based at Pratica di Mare. Popping the trunk lid, he and Melanie climbed out of the car and retrieved their bags. Then, leading the way, Jacob strode quickly and purposefully down to the airfield.

The distinctive whir of helicopter blades slicing the air was audible as soon as the _fratello _pair stepped out of the vehicle and grew progressively louder as they neared. The composed, controlled shouting of the flight crew underscored the mechanical roar of the chopper's engines

"So what are we doing here, anyway?" Melanie asked carefully while glancing up at Jacob.

"There's a group of GIS commandos who are heading up to Casentinesi National Park for a training exercise," Jacob explained curtly. "Lucky for us, most of them know about the cyborg program and the rest are smart enough to not ask questions, so Major Sales managed to secure us a couple of seats."

Melanie nodded simply in understanding and said no more. With the noise given off by the idling helicopter, any further talk would have been wasted in any case. She cringed slightly against the deafening cacophony. With her enhanced sense of hearing, the whirring roar teetered on the brink of being completely overwhelming.

The pair was met by a Sergeant Alfonso Maletta, who ushered them both over to the open helicopter. The stony-faced soldier handed each a set of ear-defenders and gloves, Melanie slapping hers on with an emphatic sense of relief.

Eight men dressed in forest-patterned camouflage fatigues made up the GIS detail. Half were already inside the helicopter and strapped in. The rest milled around outside awaiting their turn. A few were talking and joking, their heads close together and still having to shout to be heard. Several turned at Jacob and Melanie's approach. She could pick out by way of briefly tightening frowns or lifted eyebrows the ones who hadn't been briefed on the truths of Section Two.

When one man opened his mouth to ask what a fifteen year old girl was doing on the airfield, about to be boarded onto a military transport helicopter, two other commandos quickly hushed him.

No words were spoken as Melanie followed behind her handler and stowed her bag inside the helicopter. Settling into one of the rear-facing seats she strapped herself in tightly, slipping the radioed head-set the co-pilot handed her over her ears. Jacob was seated directly across from her. All around her, hard-faced men decked out in camo-paint and tactical harnesses sat chatting amongst themselves.

Despite the distinct oddity of Melanie's presence among them, most of the men took it in stride and simply ignored her. Her being there certainly did nothing to deter them from the standard good-natured chatter that typically proceeded most training exercises.

The noise from the engine made hearing difficult, but Melanie was still able to pick out most of what was said around her. Much to her dismay, as one of the commandos made a rather crude joke that left most everyone cracking up in laughter. Even Jacob, she noted, sported a thin-lipped grin.

Cheeks afire in embarrassment from the vulgar joke, Melanie shifted around in her seat and pointedly kept her gaze fixed out the open hatch immediately beside her. The burning blush only deepened when the commanding officer told the men off harshly, killing their laughter. She already felt as though she stuck out like a sore thumb; the last thing Melanie needed was to be seen as responsible for their being reprimanded.

The commandos accepted the rebuke with only minimal grumbling, however. Most had the good-grace to look abashed and several even offered her quick words of apology. Whether that was due to any genuine feelings of remorse or simple fear of what one of the government's cyborg assassins was capable of when offended, she couldn't say.

The _fratello_ did not need to wait long before the rest of the GIS soldiers and their gear were loaded up and secured. After only ten minutes, the doors were slid shut and final take-off procedures were initiated.

With an even greater roar from the engines as they picked up speed, the sleek army-green AB 412 utility helicopter lifted into the air. Rising quickly, Melanie watched with rapt fascination as the ground dropped away beneath them. Within only a few minutes the aircraft had climbed up to roughly two-hundred meters and levelled out at a cruising speed of just over two-hundred and twenty kilometres per hour.

As the landscape zipped by below, Melanie found more and more of her attention drawn and held by the spectacle. A broad, ecstatic grin overtook her face as she watched the tiny, ant-like people scurrying around. The sight of the vast, sapphire expanse of the Tyrrhenian Sea spreading out before her, the water sparkling in the morning light had Melanie's eyes bulging slightly in open-mouthed wonder. She could scarcely imagine the notion of so much water all being in the same place.

Jacob watched with a strange mixture of both mild amusement and bitter regret. All around them, the GIS commandos smiled and chuckled at Melanie's innocent, child-like amazement at the prospect of flying. While he shared their feelings in that respect, his were tempered by painful memories being dredged up from his past.

The last memory he had of such pure, unsullied innocence came from years ago; long before Jacob had joined the agency or had even resigned from the Canadian Forces. Before the death of his son and the vicious divorce that event had spawned.

Jacob could clearly see in his mind, all the way back to that last summer before the deployment that had ended with that fateful call from home. One particular day, in mid-July, that stuck out large and glaring in his mind.

The day had been overcast and slightly cool, but not so-much-so that it had deterred anyone from attending the annual Family Day beach party. It was a chance for the soldiers of a particular unit and their families to get together and socialize over barbeques and sandcastles, organized and paid-for by the military.

Aside from swimming and barbequing and sandcastle-making, each year there would be a tank or APC rolled down to the beach for the children to clamber all over and look at, both inside and out. Some years, if it was in the budget, the local air squadron would bring out one of their helicopters for the day and offer quick flights around the area.

Such had been the case that year and as always it was the top attraction of the day. Jacob's son Zach had been among the milling crowd of eager-faced children wanting to be taken up and flown around. He could still see the look of unbridled amazement and glee on Zach's face the first time they went up. A look that had not diminished after the second or third trip, either.

Staring across at Melanie now, Jacob's heart felt like a leaden weight in his chest. Her face was an almost perfectly mirrored reflection to Zach's, all those years ago now.

Feigning tiredness, Jacob gave a deep, fake yawn and rubbed the heels of both hands into his eyes. Both hands came away damp.

A little over an hour's flight time saw the helicopter hovering low over the forested hills of Casentinesi National Park. Two of the GIS commandos rose and slid open both doors. A fierce wind kicked up by the downwash of the rotor-blades filled the cabin, roaring in Melanie's ears and whipping at her hair. The other six men began stirring almost immediately and moved to strap their own camouflage-patterned rucksacks onto their backs.

Scrunching back in her seat, out of the way, Melanie watched curiously as the pair manning the doors extended a series of reinforced metal arms out the open doors. Ropes attached to pulleys on the ends of each arm were cast out.

Four at a time, two men to each side, the commandos clipped quick-release rappelling clamps onto the lines and stepped out into open air. They dropped quickly out of sight and were soon on the ground. Unhooking themselves, the men rushed away from the drop-zone and into the surrounding woods, unslinging their Heckler and Koch MP5 sub-machine guns as they moved.

The second set of four men moved to rappel down to the ground and Jacob unhooked himself from his seat as the co-pilot came into the cabin to help pull in and secure the anchoring arms.

Watching through the window of the once-again closed doors as the commandos disappeared into the forest, Melanie felt the helicopter lurch into motion. The rolling hills of the Northern Apennines slid by beneath them and in the far distance, on the edge of the horizon she could make out the glittering blue band of the Adriatic.

There was a faint crackle of static as the radio came alive. A moment later, the co-pilot called back loudly, "We're going to have to make a quick stop at Cervia Air Force Base to refuel before heading on to Stelvio." Jacob flashed the man a quick "thumbs-up" to acknowledge the message.

The minutes ticked away swift and smooth as Melanie's focus remained captivated by the landscape below. The only small element of lingering regret was for the loss of the churning wind whipping past her face. Something about the feel of the air rushing by, pulling at her hair and clothes, seemed to stir something deep within her soul. The only thing she could compare the strange, tingling sensation to was when she had watched, entranced, as Triela and Alpha had sparred together that very first day after her awakening.

When the helicopter touched down at Cervia Air Force Base, located some five kilometres from the Adriatic Sea, Jacob and Melanie both unstrapped themselves and exited the craft. Like Pratica di Mare on the opposite coast, Cervia served the same function of Search and Rescue staging hub. Just as at Pratica di Mare, there was a large contingent of helicopter crews stationed there.

Several of those helicopters were out on the landing pads upon their arrival and Jacob felt an involuntary squirm of discomfort and trepidation in the pit of his stomach. Staring across the tarmac at the bulky machines, he sent up a silent prayer that Major Sales had secured them a ride on the Agusta-Bell four-twelve "Grifone", rather than one of the numerous Sikorsky SH-3 "Sea Kings". The old birds didn't exactly have the best of reputations back in his native Canada.

After a few minutes of stretching their legs, Jacob gave Melanie curt instructions to go back into the helicopter and to stay there. It wouldn't be long before the day's regular shifts started and the air base to be crawling with soldiers and mechanics going about their duties. The fewer eyes that saw her, the better.

As for himself, Jacob made his way to the main canteen to grab them both something to eat. The canteen itself wasn't open yet, but there was a vending machine that he used to buy a few breakfast bars.

Returning to the helipad, Jacob climbed back into the helicopter and tossed one of the bars into Melanie's lap. She mumbled words of thanks and began nibbling at it slowly.

Rather than resume his seat, Jacob knelt down beside his rucksack and, digging through the main pouch, retrieved a full-body harness sized to fit Melanie. He set the harness down beside her, telling her to put it on when she was finished eating.

"We're going to be rappelling down into Stelvio National Park," he said in explanation to her questioning look. Jacob then suited his own words and climbed into a harness that he fetched from among the helicopter's onboard supplies.

Before long they were off again, this time heading north and slight west, towards the Swiss border. Rolling hills, verdant orchards and quilt-like crop fields passed by far below. Small towns and rustic mountain villages dotted the landscape, with the roads criss-crossing between them looking like some massive, county-spanning spider's web when viewed from so far up.

The trip to Stelvio took considerably less time than the one to Casentinesi and within thirty minutes, the helicopter was stopped and left hovering low over a small clearing in the Eastern reaches of Italy's largest national park. Parco Nazionale dello Stelvio covered several hundred hectares of land within the heart of the Italian Alps, butting up against both the Swiss and Austrian borders.

Once again un-strapping himself from his seat, Jacob rose and slid open one of the two doors, letting in a sudden rush of wind. And once again, as the down blast of air slammed into her, Melanie felt that same stirring from deep within her. That slight tingle of excited expectation. There was something so…familiar about the sensation. She could feel deeply buried memories stirring within her.

The feeling was faint; so faint as to be nothing more than the whispered echo of a memory. And like a wispy tendril of fog caught by the harsh, burning glare of afternoon sunlight, the memory vanished and was gone when she tried to reach out and grasp it.

"Hey! Pay attention!"

Melanie jerked in her seat, eyes bulging in the realization that Jacob was yelling at her. The co-pilot, standing by the open door with one hand on the extended anchor arm, eyed her strangely, as if wondering whether something was wrong with her or not.

"Oh God, I'm…I'm so sorry Jacob," she stammered, blushing in embarrassment. "I must have…spaced out or…or something."

She attempted to lunge to her feet, but was pulled back sharply by something gripping her shoulders and chest. She made several, frantic attempts to stand before realizing that it was just the seatbelt straps holding her in place. Face burning even hotter, Melanie unbuckled the straps and climbed slowly to her feet. Jacob stared down at her, eyes boring into her own with a mix of anger and frustration.

"Pull your head out of your ass and open your damn ears," Jacob barked harshly. "Unless you plan on _jumping_ down to the ground you need to learn how to do this."

Regaining some of her equilibrium, Melanie managed to fix Jacob with a sardonic glare that was only marginally spoiled by the lingering colour staining her cheeks. "I know how to rappel down a rope Jacob. I've done it a thousand times in training."

"Rappelling down the side of a stationary building isn't the same as jumping out of a hovering helicopter," Jacob retorted. For a moment Melanie continued to lock eyes with her irritated handler, until both partners' attentions were drawn by the co-pilot.

"You two want to continue this little "lover's spat" on the ground? We're burning fuel here."

For the briefest of moments, Melanie was rewarded with the supremely satisfying sight of Jacob caught off guard and emotionally flustered. Shock, anger and embarrassed indignation flitted across his face in a flashing wave too quick for any but a cyborg's eyes to pick out.

Then it was gone; wiped away as the hardened mask of rough-faced stone settled once more over Jacob's features.

Swallowing her irritation, Melanie submitted silently to Jacob's instructions on what to do when rappelling out of a helicopter, delivered in a harsh, lecturing tone. Afterwards, she stood by and watched as he gave her a practical demonstration. Jacob clipped the carabiner onto the quick-rappel device and, looping the free end of the line over the metal ring on the top of the device, stepped backwards onto the aluminum running-board.

When the co-pilot signalled, Jacob un-looped the line and fell slowly backwards, the rope sliding smoothly up, through the device. He kicked free from the helicopter and slid out of sight.

Despite her feelings of annoyance towards the man, Melanie felt her heart give an involuntary lurch as Jacob vanished from view. Images of his body hurtling towards the ground, being dashed upon unyielding, jagged rocks popped unbidden into her mind.

Fear and anxiety crackling through her, Melanie took a frantic step forward and peered out the open door. And saw Jacob rapidly descending in a single smooth, controlled motion. Within seconds he was touching down on the ground and unhooking himself from the dangling cable.

A soft hand on her shoulder brought Melanie's attention back to her own surroundings. Glancing up, she saw the co-pilot standing over her, smiling reassuringly. "Your turn ma'am."

The tall, lean airman passed Melanie her rucksack, which she grabbed and slung over her shoulders, strapping it tightly into place. Stepping into position at the open door, she handed over the thickly-padded ear defenders and took hold of the rope he proffered to her. She clipped the carabiner attached to her own harness to the bottom metal ring, giving a sharp tug on the line to make sure everything was snug and secure. When she was certain that she was ready, Melanie flashed the still softly-smiling man a quick "thumbs-up" sign, which he acknowledged with a sharp bob of his head.

"Try not to worry about the drop; it's pretty easy once you get the hang of it. Besides," the man said, offering her a broad, teasing grin, one hand resting lightly on her shoulder. "With your cyborg body, even if you _were_ to fall the whole way down, you'd probably still be fine."

"Gee thanks," Melanie grumbled sourly, stepping up to the edge of the floor. "That makes me feel _so_ much better." Without another word, she stepped back and plunged down into the open air.

The braided nylon rope was fitted into small notches set into the base of the metal rings that comprised both ends of the cast aluminum rod that made up the device itself. The rope was wrapped in three tight turns around the rod, allowing friction to control the rate of descent. The more times the rope was wrapped around the rod, the more surface area that was contacting the metal and thus the slower the descent. A hard plastic shell was fitted over the whole thing to help protect the line from damage.

The downwash from the four rotor blades buffeted Melanie as she quickly dropped down towards the ground. For a moment, the feel of the wind streaming past her face almost threatened to overwhelm her and she had to fight to remain focused on the task at hand.

One hand lightly gripped the rope just below where it exited the plastic tube, helping to control her descent. The other hand quickly played out the dangling end of the line to keep it from tangling or getting caught in anything.

She swayed back and forth gently, twirling around in the slow spiral. Melanie spared a few moments to enjoy the spectacular view afforded to her by being suspended in the open air, several dozen feet above the ground.

The towering, snow-capped peaks of the Alps rose all around her; their steep, forested slopes still dusted white from the lingering winter that refused to release its grip on the mountainous region. Tiny rivers and streams meandered through the hills like the thin blue strings of a necklace. Lakes nestled in deep valleys were the glittering beads on those necklaces.

Off in the far distance, only visible to her through the benefit of cybernetically-enhanced sight, Melanie could just make out the shaggy form of a wild mountain goat picking its way across the rocks of a towering peak. Several more goats were spread out along the ridge both above and below. A dozen feet or so higher up, a ram stood gazing down imperiously; watching over his herd.

Melanie's feet hit the ground with a force that would have staggered a grown man. Her titanium-reinforced skeletal structure and artificial joins absorbed the impact completely, making it seem as if she had simply hopped down from her bed, rather than dropped down from a helicopter.

She unclipped herself from the rappelling line and Jacob signalled to the co-pilot to begin withdrawing the ropes. Melanie watched as the two lines snaked upwards and slipped back into the helicopter. A moment later the door slid closed and the helicopter flew off, disappearing over the treetops. The pair was now alone in the middle of the Italian Alps.

"Alright, now listen up," Jacob barked, waving her over towards him. "Now that we're here I can tell you what we're going to be doing." Melanie perked up immediately and strode over to him eagerly. This is what she had been waiting for.

"Yesterday, three of Major Sales' commandos hiked out to this area of Stelvio national Park. They were given instructions to spend the entire afternoon walking through the forest, while laying a trail behind them.

"Your job, Melanie, is to find that trail and to then follow it to where they've made camp."

"What kind of trail am I looking for?" Melanie asked, slightly worried that she was being expected to track a team of elite special forces soldiers on her very first training exercise.

"They're using a roll of plastic ribbon to periodically mark where they're going. You'll need to find these markers in order to follow their trail. And before you ask," he added sharply just as she opened her mouth, "I don't know what colour the ribbon is. That's part of what you'll have to find out."

"Okay, I understand." Melanie sighed inwardly in relief that they had decided to go easy on her. Now that they were actually out in the crisp, clean mountain air, the cold breeze ruffling Melanie's hair and tugging at her clothes, she felt a sense of exhilarated thrill. She found herself excitedly longing to get started.

The first thing Jacob had her do was take out her compass and the laminated map he had given her, so that she could plot their position and find out where exactly they were. Giving short, simple instructions, he walked Melanie through the process.

Picking out two prominent landmarks, she took a compass bearing on each, and then transferred those bearings to the map. The only point on the map where the bearings lined up with both landmarks indicated their current location.

After Melanie was done, Jacob checked her work against the military-grade GPS unit he had brought with him. To his rather shocked amazement, he found that she was only off by a little over ten metres. He gave her a shallow nod acknowledging her good work, which set Melanie's softly-rounded face into a beaming grin.

Jacob glanced away, clearing his throat awkwardly. He was more than slightly uncomfortable with the look of glowing adoration he was getting from Melanie. "Al…alright; the next thing we need to do is find the commandos' trail. We do that by…"

"Starting at our current position and then slowly spiralling outward, right?" Melanie chirped, interrupting him in her eagerness to show that she knew what to do. To her disappointment, rather than praise her, Jacob only frowned and glared.

"Don't ever interrupt me when I'm talking," Jacob growled.

"Oh, r…right. I'm sorry Jacob." Melanie instantly lowered her gaze, her broad grin evaporating into a crestfallen pout. What was wrong with her? _Every_ time she managed to do something that made Jacob pleased or proud of her, she had to then go do something stupid to screw it up and make him angry again. Why couldn't she just keep her damned mouth shut?

"Lucky for you, you're right," Jacob went on, modulating his tone somewhat. "That _is_ what we do in order to pick up their trail.

"For simplicity's sake, and because this is your first training exercise, we've been dropped off fairly close to where the commandos were supposed to start placing their markers. So it shouldn't take you too long to find their trail."

Not wanting to risk opening her mouth and saying something else that was liable to upset her handler, Melanie simply nodded and shouldered her pack. She slipped the compass into the pocket of her jeans and tucked the map away inside her coat. Then, with Jacob waving her on to take the lead, she headed to the edge of the clearing to begin the search.

Pushing through the underbrush, fighting to maintain a steady footing on the steep terrain, Melanie carefully scanned along the ground and into the lower branches of the surrounding bushes and trees. Without any way of knowing where the first marker would be, or what colour it was, she wanted to be certain not to miss anything that looked even remotely out of place.

Jacob hung back several feet behind her, leaving Melanie to fend for herself in the search. He didn't want to interfere or help her in any way, unless absolutely necessary. Instead he used his time to carefully study her motions, watching how she moved and conducted herself in the search.

Melanie's head swept from side-to-side in smooth, graceful motions, never resting in one spot for more than a few seconds at a time before moving on. With her cybernetic eyes, she could pierce the shadows enshrouding the deeper areas of the underbrush as if they were fully exposed to the full light of a noon-day sun.

Those eyes allowed her to pick out every twig, every leaf and every blade of grass as if she had a magnifying glass trained on them. Each miniscule wrinkle and fold in the bark of the trees around them were clear in her vision. Nothing escaped her notice.

After nearly an hour of painstaking search, Melanie suddenly stopped dead in her tracks. Her eyes widened slightly as she caught sight of a small scrap of yellow peeking out from two branches of a bush. Kneeling in closer to inspect the scrap, Melanie let out an excited cry at finding a thin ribbon tied tightly to a branch. The first marker.

The crunch of boots on rocky soil announced Jacob's coming up behind her and Melanie spun around, standing up in a single fluid motion and flashing him a triumphant smile. He glanced down at the knotted strip of plastic she held clutched tightly in both hands.

"Ok, not bad," he admitted, watching with mildly exasperated amusement as Melanie seemed to swell with pride. "Now what do we do?"

Melanie pursed her lips slightly, brow furrowing in thought. After several moments of consideration, she hazarded a guess. "We start another spiral search pattern to find the next trail marker?"

"Are you asking me if that's what we do, or are you telling me?" Jacob asked, pressing her to make a concrete decision.

Melanie paused, worried about giving a wrong answer and possibly making Jacob mad at her. But finally she answered, sucking in a deep breath to steady her nerves. "Um…I'm telling you. We should do another spiralling search of the area to find the next marker."

"Wrong."

Melanie's face fell with that single word, her heart sinking into her toes. It had seemed so obvious of an answer. It certainly made sense to her. But then, thinking about it, that was likely the very reason _why_ it was wrong.

"The first thing we do now is re-plot our position on the map," Jacob explained calmly. At least she had that to be thankful for: he wasn't angry at her. "That way, if we loose the trail, we have a reference point to come back to and start again."

Melanie nodded her head slowly, understanding the wisdom in such a procedure. A sudden thought struck her then though, and she frowned speculatively. "Does that mean I have to re-plot our position every time I find a new trail marker? Because that seems a little tedious. I mean, if this were a real mission and we were pursuing terrorists or _Mafiosi_, wouldn't that give them more time to get away?"

"You're right, it would," Jacob replied, silently glad that Melanie was actually using her head for a change, rather than moping around or following his orders blindly. "You don't have to plot your position for each new sign of your quarry's trail.

"Once when you first find their trail and again each time the trail either splits or gets hard to follow is enough. Basically, if you think you may end up losing the trail, for any reason, then re-plot."

"Right, I got it," Melanie stated strongly, determined to prove to Jacob that she could do this. As such, the words were not fully out of her mouth before Melanie was withdrawing her compass in order to take her bearings. Again Jacob checked her work against his GPS unit and again he found that she was within only a ten metre margin of error.

After that, just as Melanie had originally suggested, the pair began a second spiralling search of the area, working their way slowly outward. The going was much quicker now as Melanie had an idea of what was looking for.

Less than twenty minutes after the search began, Melanie was kneeling down on the ground, fingering a second length of yellow ribbon. Placed right close to the ground, half-hidden by the broad leaves of a tall flower with numerous small white blossoms, the ribbon was wrapped loosely around the stiff, metre-tall stalk.

Melanie felt an excited thrill tingle up the length of her body and savoured the moment, basking in the sense of satisfaction that swept over her from Jacob's approving nod. She fought hard to keep herself from becoming too consumed by those feelings, however. She was finding that those often proved the times when she would inevitably screw something up.

Focussing her mind squarely on the task of pursuing the commandos' trail, Melanie collected the ribbon and, after pausing to wait for Jacob's signal to continue, set out once more.

Striding along in Melanie's wake several feet behind, Jacob watched critically as his cyborg picked her way across the rocky terrain. The land was rugged and wild, with barely a single flat stretch to be seen. His legs were beginning to burn from the physical exertion and before long his breath was coming in short, ragged gasps. With the steep slopes and deep folds in the ground, the pair moved a good four or five feet either up or down for every foot forward. The hike was taking its toll on the older man.

For all the trouble that Jacob was having, Melanie seemed not to notice at all. She moved across the rough landscape quickly and smoothly, flowing with an almost terrifying liquid grace. He had a sudden flash of the last time he had seen such motions: Sophia gliding across the hilly ground during their approach to the Padania training camp. The memory set off a sharp pang of bitter regret and loss within him.

The hard, fast pace that Melanie set helped Jacob push aside his memories of Sophia, as it required all of his attention just to keep from being left behind. Several times over the next hour, Jacob was forced to pause and pull out his silver flask, taking a quick swallow in order to fortify himself. The burning mouthfuls worked instantly, helping to numb the pain that was burning in his legs with an equal fervour.

With each new trail marker that she found, Melanie seemed to press on all the harder to locate the next one. She followed a course that meandered back-and-forth in order to prevent her missing a sudden change in course, which Jacob was relieved to see. Already she had avoided losing the trail because of that decision, after finding one marker in the low branches of a pine tree along the edge of one such sideways sweep.

Before long, however, Jacob started to notice signs of increasing obsession and a narrowing of focus on Melanie's part. The speed of her movements gradually increased to an almost reckless pace. Her zigzagging sweeps slowly grew tighter and tighter until she was simply ploughing forward without any regard to what was to either side of her. Jacob could recognize the signs of tunnel-vision and he knew that Melanie was charging ahead blindly.

Struggling against the impulse to call Melanie up short and bring her to task, Jacob forced himself to let her run. As much as he wanted to lecture her about the foolish stupidity of ignoring your surroundings, he also recognized the need for Melanie to learn from her own mistakes.

Fortunately for Jacob, he didn't have to wait for very long. A little over an hour after Melanie had found the second marker, she slowed almost to a complete stop. Head swivelling from side-to-side, she scanned the ground frantically. Her hands swept back branches and brushed aside leaves and she began to pace about erratically in a desperate effort to find some sign of the commandos' trail.

"Something wrong?" Jacob asked sardonically, arms folded across his chest and a small smile curling his lips.

"I…I think," Melanie stammered weakly. Her heart pounded away inside her chest at a furious rate and her stomach fluttered with a nervous nausea. "I think I lost the trail."

"So I see," Jacob said scathingly, making Melanie hang her head in shame. "Care to take a guess as to why?"

Melanie answered hesitantly, afraid that Jacob was going to be upset and angry at her for making what she was as a major mistake. "I…I guess I…might have not been…um…paying attention to…to what was around me?"

"Asking me or tell me, Melanie?"

Gulping nervously, Melanie managed to swallow some of her fear and steadied her nerves. Enough to reply in a relatively flat, stable voice, "Telling you. I wasn't…I wasn't paying attention to what was around me."

"No, you weren't. And that's exactly why you lost the trail." To Melanie's profound relief, while Jacob certainly seemed to be mildly upset and was clearly disappointed with her, he did not appear to her to be overly angry. Unbeknownst to her, that fact was due in large part to the numerous sips Jacob had taken from his flask. Each tiny gulp had progressively built up upon each other and Jacob now found himself sporting a rather respectable buzz.

While not inebriated enough to be truly impaired, Jacob was just drunk enough for it to mellow out his mood and keep him from wanting to snap Melanie's head off.

"You _need_ to pay attention to what's around you Melanie. There aren't any roads or obvious paths to follow out here and even if there were, there's nothing saying that the commandos will have used them."

"I understand," Melanie said sullenly.

"Doing what you were doing: charging ahead blindly, is the fastest way of walking straight into an ambush and getting either yourself or a team-mate killed."

Melanie's head snapped up at that, eyes widening in alarm. Her stomach instantly responded with a sickening lurch and she tasted bile suddenly burning in her throat. Even knowing that this was nothing more than a training exercise, just the thought of her actions having potentially put Jacob's life at risk elicited a powerful response from her conditioning.

"You were actually doing just fine earlier," Jacob continued after a short pause to allow Melanie time to process the seriousness of her mistake. "The way you were searching from side-to-side, scanning the area around the path the commandos were taking was exactly what you should be doing. But you let yourself get caught up in your own eagerness and started focussing solely on what was directly in front of you. You _can't_ do that."

"I understand."

"Good. Then if you can remember where you found the last trail marker, we need to backtrack to that point. Otherwise we'll need to go all the way back to the last point where you plotted out position."

"No, I remember where the last marker was," Melanie replied, shaking her head against the notion of having to spend an hour walking all the way back to the last place she had taken a bearing.

In the end, it still took a good fifteen minutes of walking before they were back on track. To Melanie's supreme and eternal embarrassment, she was able to locate the next marker in less than five minutes of searching. Seeing the signs of their own passage through the underbrush, she realized that she had marched right past the ribbon without noticing it at all. It was over an hour before the colour fully faded from Melanie's cheeks.

To Jacob's silently approving delight, almost immediately after finding the marker and before he had time to even open his mouth, Melanie was pulling out both map and compass in order to take a bearing and plot their position. Once again, just as in the three times before, checking Melanie's work showed her to be within less than a ten metre margin of error. In fact, seeing that this latest time had her only six metres off, Jacob noted that her accuracy was steadily improving.

Jacob called a break for lunch a couple of hours later, directing Melanie over into a spacious, gently-sloping field of low grasses and wildflowers. The curling edge of the forest at their backs cut most of the cold wind, leaving them to enjoy the crisp, clear mountain air. There was a large, flattened rock formation jutting out from the soil that provided perfect seating for both.

Melanie marvelled at the spectacular view as Jacob set up a compact kerosene camping stove and began boiling a pot of water drawn from a nearby stream. The slope angled down sharply several dozen feet below them, forming the Eastern wall of a broad valley that twisted and curled with the contours of the surrounding peaks.

While the Eastern slope was rather heavily forested, across the valley the trees ended much further up. Long alpine grasses swayed in the gentle, steady breeze. Low bushes and clustered masses of wildflowers blooming in every colour imaginable dotted the distant wall of the valley.

Off to her left, Melanie's keen cyborg ears picked out the sound of tumbling water and after a few moments of careful searching, she spotted a narrow stream pouring down from between a cleft in the rock-face about a hundred feet higher up, wending its way to the valley floor.

The gentle breeze softly caressing her face, Melanie leaned back and closed her eyes. A faint smile curled the edges of her lips and she sighed in utter contentment. A sense of profound peace settled over her with the thought of being in the midst of such serene, picturesque surroundings.

A short, gruff call from Jacob pulled Melanie's eyes reluctantly away from the panoramic vista. Turning towards her handler, she found him fishing out two aluminum pouches from the steaming, bubbling water with his fork. Digging into her pack, Melanie withdrew her plastic bowl, which she then held out to Jacob for him to drop one of the pouches into.

Melanie tore open the hot pouch and dumped its contents into the bowl. Instantly her nose was assailed by the tantalizing odours of a thinly-spiced turkey and vegetable stew. Glancing over, she noted that Jacob was already digging into his beef ravioli with emphatic eagerness.

"This is pretty good," Melanie exclaimed after her first spoonful of stew. "What are these?"

"Canadian IMPs," Jacob replied between mouthfuls. Flicking a quick glance up, he noted Melanie's blank look and added, "Individual meal packs; army rations. These are what I lived off of for weeks at a time when in the Forces."

"Didn't they have cafeterias or mess halls or whatever when you were on mission?" Melanie asked curiously. It was extremely rare for Jacob to talk about himself or his life before the agency and Melanie eagerly snatched at any chance she could get to learn more about her handler.

"I was in the Special Forces branch of the Canadian Military Melanie. When I was on mission, it was usually behind the lines black-ops work. We could be outside the wire for several days before we completed our objectives and returned to base."

Pausing to spoon the rest of the ravioli into his mouth, it was minute or two before Jacob continued. "Back in ninety-seven we did a drop into Northern Peru, hunting down guerrillas being funded by the Columbian drug cartels. We were almost three weeks in the bush before we evaced back to Panama."

Melanie could only stare, slack-jawed at this almost coldly-casual admission. "Wow. That…that's so cool."

Jacob shrugged his shoulders indifferently. In his mind, from what he remembered, the mission had not been all that big of a deal. It had proven to be more of a time-consuming nuisance than anything else. "Actually it was hot, wet, filthy and boring. We spent more than two weeks trudging back-and-forth through the jungle looking for these guerrillas, eventually engaged them in a surprise-attack that lasted all of ten minutes and then spent the next four days trudging _back_ through the jungle to our extraction zone."

"Oh, well, I guess I can see how that would be pretty boring," Melanie mumbled sympathetically. "But I suppose being bored is better than being busy, right? I mean, seeing as how you were black-ops, being busy would probably mean you're being shot at. Right?"

Melanie's half-joking comment was rewarded with a brief, barking chuckle from Jacob, who cracked a thin smile and bobbed his head in acknowledgement. "I suppose you have a point there." Jacob's face fell back into a stony mask then as memories rose up from the buried depths of his mind. Memories of missions that had been decidedly less than merely boring.

_God knows,__ Peru was a hell of a lot better than Rwanda_, Jacob thought darkly, feeling himself sink down into a pit of bitterness and disgust. No amount of alcohol would ever scour away those images carved into his mind.

"Why; what happened in Rwanda?" Melanie asked, drawing a hastily-swallowed curse from Jacob. He had not realized he had spoken aloud.

"Rwanda was a mess, that's what happened," Jacob snapped, feeling his pleasant buzz evaporating quickly.

"What do you mean? What kind of mess?" she pressed, not meaning to pry but simply curious about his past.

Jacob was in no mood to satisfy Melanie's curiosity and, fuelled by his own memories of the sickening experience, he lashed out angrily at her. "It's none of you're damn business what happened. Rwanda is over and done with and in the past. It has nothing to do with what we're doing out here, so just eat your damn food!"

Melanie recoiled as if physically struck, her eyes bulging wide with affronted alarm. She couldn't understand what had set Jacob off. How could he have gone from being so open and communicative one moment, to tearing her head off the next?

She stared down into her bowl, willing back the tears that were gathering in her eyes. _Oh God Melanie, don't start crying,_ she whispered to herself fiercely. _Please, don't you _dare_ start crying. Jacob's mad at you enough as it is._

With a supreme amount of effort she managed to choke back the tears and keep from breaking out into piteous sobs.

After Melanie had finished her stew, Jacob handed her a pouch of chopped cherries in a thin, sugary syrup. As good as the desert undoubtedly tasted, Melanie ate mechanically, not really taking note of the flavours.

When that was done, Melanie accepted the small packet of juice crystals that Jacob gave her and dumped it into her cup, filled with water from her canteen. She gulped down the juice in three long swallows, again barely tasting it.

Rinsing out and cleaning their dishes with the cooling water from the pot, Jacob and Melanie repacked their gear in silence and then made their way wordlessly back into the forest to resumed the hunt.

Two long, silent hours later, Melanie was picking her way across the broad, rocky ridge higher up in the mountains. The forest had thinned out and fallen away some time ago, leaving the vegetation at sparse, hearty grasses and a few scattered shrubs and ground-hugging flowers. The ridge sloped away very sharply to the right, eventually breaking off into a sheer drop of several hundred feet.

As high up as they were, the air was bitterly cold and starting to grow thin. While the altitude didn't hamper Melanie in the slightest, Jacob was finding it very difficult. Each of his breaths came in deep, laboured pants and he was needing to take two or even three for every one of hers.

Still upset and dejected from earlier, neither one was paying as close attention to the surrounding terrain as they should have been. The first sign of trouble was a faint crackling underfoot as Melanie stepped out onto a stretch of bared rock that jutted out slightly from the sloping ridge. The sound of tiny pebbles bouncing and rolling downhill went unheeded by both handler and cyborg.

A dozen feet further along the ridge, Melanie stepped down onto a lower shelf of stone. Lifting her other foot, she suddenly found herself toppling forward as the stone, actually a collection of compacted smaller rocks, gave way under her weight and crumbled apart.

Rocks and pebbles slid down the slope in a loose shower. Melanie yelped in alarm as her lead foot shot out from under her and the cold hard ground leapt up to meet her. Throwing her hands up to protect her face and vulnerable eyes, she braced herself for the impact.

All of a sudden, something jerked her back roughly. Instead of face-planting into the ground, she ended up dropping down into her rear-end with bone-jarring force. She winced sharply as her tailbone cracked against the hard rock.

Jacob released his white-knuckled death-grip on Melanie's rucksack. Panting now from the overwhelming rush of adrenaline rather than the thin air, he sucked in several deep breaths in a vain effort to calm his nerves. He waited until he was sure that the ridge would hold, and that they were both safe. Then he exploded.

"Jesus _fucking_ Christ Melanie! What the Hell is wrong with you? Are you_ trying_ to kill yourself? Seriously, what the _fuck_ is going through that thick-skulled head of yours? Are you…"

He cut off his tirade sharply with a dull grunt as Melanie slammed into him, knocking him backwards several paces. Her arms snaked around his waist and locked together tightly. On her knees, Melanie buried her face into his stomach and burst out into terrified sobs. Jacob could literally see her entire body trembling, she shook so badly.

_Oh great. Smooth move jackass,_ Jacob swore, mentally berating himself. He could only imagine how scared she was and here he had to go and make it even worse.

"Okay Melanie, you're all right. Everything is fine; you're safe. Now let go of me." He tried to pry her arms free, but with each attempt, the petrified girl only gave a terrified squeal that was only partially muffled by his coat and squeezed even tighter.

"Damn it Melanie, let go!" Jacob barked, her arms digging painfully into his sides. She simply sobbed louder and clung tighter in response.

Jacob felt the breath being slowly squeezed out of him from the force of her grip. With the amount of physical strength at her disposal, if he couldn't get her off of him soon, then there was the very real possibility of her crushing bone or inflicting permanent organ damage.

Gasping for breath as Melanie's tightening hug crushed his diaphragm, Jacob barely managed to choke out, "Melanie please; you're hurting me."

That got through to her and in an instant Melanie's arms sprang away and she pulled back frantically. Tears streamed down her soft cheeks. Her yellowed eyes were bulged open as wide as they would go. A look of pure, primal terror was etched into every line of her face, but for very different reasons now. "Oh my God. Oh my God Jacob I…I'm so, so sorry. I…I…"

Melanie's mind locked up, her brain freezing as the singular thought of her having actually injured her own handler cycled through her head in a continuous, screaming loop. She could feel the vicious steel jaws of the conditioning programming tearing through her mind. Nausea swept through her in a rising wave and her vision blurred and grew dark.

Pitching herself to one side, Melanie vomited loudly and painfully over the edge of the ridge. Over and over and over she spewed, until there was nothing left in her stomach to bring up. Even then though, the conditioning refused to release her and she continued to retch; gagging and dry heaving. Her entire middle was one single mass of knotted agony.

The blazing, fiery pain followed her down into the black abyss as her mind shut down. All the strength in her body flowed out of her and she collapsed to the ground, unable to move. A single, spasmodic tremor rippled through her and everything went black.


	8. Chapter 07: Cat and Mouse

Chapter 07: Cat and Mouse

Enzo shifted awkwardly in his seat at the long table dominating the middle of the room, working his shoulders until he heard and felt a satisfying pop. He let out a little sigh of contentment as the knot that had been trapped there vanished. Picking up his mug, he took a long, slow sip of coffee that worked wonders to warm him up from the inside and chase away the cobwebs lingering inside his skull. It was still far too early in the morning in his estimation to be awake, especially given how late he had been up the night before. Damn Lucretia and her obsessive focus on her computer skills. The girl seemed determined to ignore any other aspects of her training and as a result her range scores were badly suffering. He hoped that the four extra hours they had spent drilling down in the shooting range had convinced her of the importance of keeping up on her firearm proficiency.

To either side of Enzo, fellow handlers Alessandro and Michele relaxed in their own respective chairs. Michele was dressed in what passed for remarkably casual wear for the normally impeccably dressed older man, his outfit consisting of a simple red Ferrari-branded polo shirt and light tan slacks. Despite this, he still managed to project an air of refined, masculine dignity. Perhaps it had something to do with the limited edition Bugatti Veyron driving watch, costing just shy of an even two-hundred thousand Euros, that the man wore.

Alessandro, by comparison, was almost slovenly in appearance. The man's pale, dirty-blonde hair was dishevelled and swept back from his forehead; evidence of his having raked his fingers back through it one too many times. Dark shadows dragged at the bottoms of his flat grey eyes and a full two day's growth of beard discoloured the lower half of his face. A rumpled black and white T-shirt and faded blue jeans were all he wore.

The thick, heavy blinds had been drawn shut, blocking out the view of a sky covered from horizon to horizon by an unbroken ceiling of oppressive slate grey clouds. Another spring storm was in the making, which would likely be bringing rain by the late afternoon. The dour weather meant that the cyborgs would get to enjoy a rare afternoon free of training, except for those whose handlers seemed to derive an almost perverse sense of satisfaction from inflicting such miserable conditions upon their girl.

Two computer terminals sat at the head of the room, flanking the projection screen. Both were currently manned by a pair of support staff members, the man and woman dutifully keeping a careful watch for any form of electronic interference that might signal an effort to eavesdrop on what was going on. Ferro herself was seated at the table almost directly opposite Enzo; her cold, impassive face glancing back and forth between the sheaf of papers set between her hands and Jean, who was at that moment standing just to one side of the projection screen, a manila file folder in hand.

In addition to Ferro and the four handlers, both Amadeo and Giorgio were present, representing the Special Response Team. Both men were dressed in a near-identical fashion of black T-shirts and black cargo pants. They had clearly spent the morning training, as there were still some small spots of mud caked to their boots and flecking the bottoms of their pants.

"Sorry I'm late," rumbled a deep, baritone voice as a fifth Section Two handler entered the room, shutting the door firmly behind him. Costante was a massive bull of a man, best described as being _thick_. A thick neck led down to broad, thick shoulders with heavily-muscled arms that were the same size as Enzo's legs. A thick barrel chest that strained at the fabric of his white dress shirt led to a thick waist and legs there were more akin to marble columns than human limbs.

Costante's hard, craggy face bore the look of a man who had spent his life getting punched in the head on an almost daily basis – and one who had held to the life way past his prime to boot – but his dark brown eyes were sharp and focused, belying the respectable mind that lurked behind that slow-witted guise. Few would ever guess to look at him that Costante had started out his career working for Public Safety as one of their more skilled and experienced spies. One would also never have imagined Costante to be the type of man who was interested in the more delicate, artistic pursuits, but rumours had him as being highly accomplished in both the piano and violin.

"I was very clear on when this briefing was to begin, Costante," Jean snapped crossly. Irritation flitted across his face, arms held rigidly at his sides. "Where were you?"

"_Over in the cyborg dormitory, getting a blowjob from Nina would be _my_ guess_," Enzo thought to himself sourly. Alessandro snickered quietly, quickly suppressed, while Michele shot Enzo a look of stern disapproval that could not completely mask the small smile that tugged at the corners of his mouth. Enzo cringed inwardly. He hadn't realized that he had spoken aloud. If Costante had heard…

Evidently the man had not, as he took up his seat without breaking stride, no sign on his face of having picked up on the rather uncouth comment. He offered an apologetic frown and bob of his head to Jean before sitting down. "I was over in the gym, cleaning up. Nina managed to tear open a punching bag, spilling sand across half of the floor. She's been a little _too_ enthusiastic in her CQB training ever since that little spat she had with Jacob's new girl; what's her name again?"

"Melanie," Enzo offered automatically, earning him a quick nod of thanks from the other man. From what he had heard, the little "spat" had resulted in two chairs and a table needing to be replaced, not to mention an entire section of the kitchen serving counter. It had also resulted in both girls needing to be taken over to the tech department to undergo repairs. According to Lucretia, the fight was already becoming the stuff of legends among the other cyborgs.

Jean frowned at Costante's explanation for his tardiness, again snapping crossly. "I expect you to keep you cyborg in line, Costante; otherwise I will have to step in and enforce a more direct solution to the problem of her behaviour."

"Don't worry Jean, I can handle Nina," Costante said casually, waving off the other man's concerns. "She's only beating up on the training equipment now and I think our operating budget can swallow the cost of a punching bag or two. Isn't that right, Ferro?"

"That would depend on how many punching bags she plans to go through between now and the end of the first quarter," the stone-faced woman replied acerbically. Enzo blinked in shock at her words. He couldn't be entirely certain due to her flat, emotionless tone but it almost sounded as if Ferro had just…made a joke? Could it be that the Social Welfare Agency's vaunted Ice Queen was in possession of a sense of humour after all? Damn it all, if that bastard Bianchi was right about her, then Enzo and plenty of other people would be out a considerable chunk of change.

"Very well; moving on," Jean said while shooting Ferro a very poignant look, to which he received a very – _very_ – tiny smile in return. If Enzo had not been searching for something, he would have missed it. _Merda_, he cursed inwardly. _There goes fifty Euros_.

"Seventy-two hours ago we received information channelled to us through several contacts stationed within Germany. This information is in relation to suspicions that Padania and select other extremist factions, as well as lesser families within both the _Camorra _and _Ndrangheta_ are being supplied with large quantities of advanced, military-grade weaponry developed by Heckler and Koch Private Industries. I trust that everyone is familiar with the failed assault against a Padania training camp five months ago?"

Everyone's faces fell in grim remembrance of that botched attack. It had been a near-perfect ambush and if not for the increased tactical training that every Section Two field agent had undergone following the brutal events of the Turin power plant battle and the sheer physical superiority of the cyborgs, a lot more people would have died that night. As is, they had still suffered one critical casualty, with Jacob's original cyborg partner, Sophia, taking a bullet to the throat and bleeding to death while awaiting reinforcements. Triela had come within a hairsbreadth of being killed as well, losing a lung and very nearly an entire arm to an armour-piercing shotgun round.

"Have they finally managed to track down whoever is working within H&K to supply those weapons?" Michele asked, unconsciously squirming in his chair. Michele had been the only handler to suffer any kind of injury in that mission, taking a piece of shrapnel in the thigh.

"Unfortunately no, they have not," Jean replied dourly. "We are still in the dark as to who is funnelling the weapon shipments out of Germany and into Italy. What our contacts _have_ provided us is the name of the man responsible for putting those weapons into terrorist hands once they cross the border." Jean turned then to the woman on his left, signalling to her to bring something up on the projection screen. A moment later, an image appeared on the large square of white canvas, sharpening into a slightly grainy snapshot of a hard-faced man in his late thirties or early forties, salt-and-pepper hair cut short and styled similarly to Michele's own darker brown hair. The man's eyes were hidden behind a pair of mirrored shades and he was dressed in a well-cut charcoal-grey business suit. "This man is Yurik Balašev; an ethnic-Albanian born in the former Yugoslavian Republic of Kosovo. He spent his late teens and early twenties opposing Slobodan Milošević during first the Bosnian and then later the Kosovo conflicts, before turning his attentions to the international arms-trade." Jean paused to glance down and frown at the now open folder that he held in both hands. "Apparently he decided that selling guns to terrorists and criminals was a more profitable enterprise than serving as a freedom-fighter for his country."

"And this is the man selling military-grade hardware to Padania?" Enzo asked sceptically. "If he has those kinds of connections, then why haven't we ever heard of him before this?"

"Because he's a small fish," Sandro replied, taking up some of the explanation. "His customer base is limited, but growing. Until now, no-one in the intelligence community felt he was important enough to pay any attention to. Or to pass along information about," he added with a wry twist of his mouth.

"Until now," Jean said in solemn agreement, nodding slowly. "Our mission is to secure Balašev and bring him in for questioning. We need the names and locations of his suppliers operating within Germany so we can contact Europol and have them organize an operation to shut off the flow of weapons. As a bonus to us, we'll also get the names of his clients here in Italy and be able to move on them.

"And where is this Balašev character right now?" Michele asked, folding his arms on the table and leaning forward slightly.

"His legal address is listed as being South-Western Austria, but he maintains a villa on the outskirts of Merano and that is where we expect to find and grab him.

"Alessandro, you and Petra will be working undercover, posing as a prospective client. Your job is to make contact with Balašev and arrange for a face-to-face meeting with him to work out an arms deal. Michele, your _fratello_ will be stationed nearby within Merano, providing overwatch and surveillance, to be joined later by Enzo." Each man nodded in mute acceptance of their respective roles in the operation. It was no surprise that Sandro would be fulfilling an undercover role; it was what he had specialized in while working for Public Safety, after all and he had trained Petrushka to be almost as good at it as he was. For Michele's part, Enzo figured that Kara would be thrilled at the prospect of getting to spend what could likely end up being several weeks alone with her handler. Michele was emphatic in his assurances that his relationship with the half-French, half-Japanese girl was purely plutonic but that would hardly stop Kara from making the most of their time together. "Amadeo, Giorgio, you will each be in command of a small squad of SRT members who will be stationed with Michele to be on-site for when the time comes to grab Balašev." Ah, poor Kara.

"If I may," Enzo ventured, lifting one hand slowly and drawing all attention to himself. "I would like to assign Lucretia to assist Sandro in establishing his and Petra's cover identities."

"Is that really going to be necessary?" Jean asked critically. "I would think that our own analyst crew is qualified enough to manufacture whatever documents that they will need."

Enzo saw Sandro glance over and give him an appreciative look before focusing his attention back to Jean and speaking up. "Actually, it might be a good idea to have her help. At best I can dress Petra up to look like she's in her late twenties but even then she's going to need some evidence of an established social life. Lucretia can hack into the popular social networking websites and fabricate a profile." Sandro began running through a list of items he and Petra would need to create a convincingly realistic background, ticking off each article on his finger. "They'll need pictures to upload, conversations between friends posted online, e-mail records, the whole nine-yards. And it will have to go back for years to be convincing. If Balašev is even half-decently intelligent, then this is exactly the kind of thing he'll look for to make sure we're both legitimate."

Jean sighed, pausing to pinch the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. "Is Lucretia up to that kind of task?" he asked, directing the question to Enzo.

"Manufacturing a good fifteen years' worth of social history doesn't happen overnight, but aside from the time it'll take to get all of the information together, putting it onto the Internet for Yurik to find should be a piece of cake for her. She can do it."

"Very good. Until further notice then, she is assigned to assist Alessandro and Petrushka in the establishing of their cover identities," Jean replied finally, flipping through the pages in his folder. Glancing up, his fixed his attention on Sandro. "Now then, I have scheduled a maximum of two months for the execution of this mission, beginning when you and Petrushka arrive in Merano. If, after that time, you have yet to secure a meeting with Balašev, I will call off the operation."

"Understood," Sandro replied flatly.

With the briefing phase of the mission planning session over with, Jean settled into the established routine of snapping out orders and explanations of how things were to be done and what types of equipment needed to be there. Every man and woman present in the room knew what needed to be done and now it was just a matter of time.

Eyelids turned to dry, gritty sandpaper drew down slowly, almost painfully, across tired, grainy eyes. Lucretia dug the heels of both hands into her eyes in a futile effort to relieve the strain, her gaze focused on the screen of her laptop. The droning hum of the various pieces of computer equipment surrounding her blended into a soothing song that threatened to pull her down into unconsciousness; the warm, cloying air given off by those computers only adding to the problem. Trapped within the cramped confines of the full-sized utility van she and Enzo currently occupied, Lucretia felt as if she were being slowly and inexorably smothered. Despite this, however, she continued to struggle valiantly against the waves of crippling fatigue snatching at her mind. Pounding one fist against her thigh in irritation, she used the other hand to smother the deep yawn that managed to slip past her control. She cursed and grumbled under her breath as a second yawn escaped, bringing tears to her eyes.

"What's the matter Lucy; are you tired?" Enzo asked from his seat next to her, chuckling lightly in amusement.

"I'm bored out of my freaking skull, that's what's the matter," Lucretia snapped peevishly, shaking her head forcefully in an effort to tear free from the quickly closing jaws of exhaustion. "We've been sitting her for like, three hours; how long does it take to sell a guy a hundred-thousand Euros' worth of guns?"

"This isn't just some run-of-the-mill business transaction we're dealing with Lucy," Enzo replied, shaking his head slowly. "Sandro is negotiating the purchase of illegal weapons. Balašev needs to be absolutely certain that he can trust Sandro before he commits to the arrangement."

"I know, I know," Lucy groaned wearily, leaning back in her seat and stretching her arms up, over her head. "But isn't that what they've been doing for past three weeks; getting to know each other? I mean, God, if one of them was a woman, they'd be having sex by now."

A sudden stream of mental images awakened in Enzo's mind at Lucretia's comment and Enzo found himself fighting to maintain a straight face, forcibly shoving aside the laughter welling up within him. He doubted that Lucy knew just how close to the truth she had actually come with that statement. Given Alessandro's past and professional history, had Yurik been a woman, they probably _would _have been sleeping together by now.

He coughed surreptitiously into one hand, clearing his throat roughly before venturing with a shaky, hesitant response. "Y…yes well, phone calls and e-mails can only go so far. Eventually a face-to-face meeting is needed; which is exactly what this is. This meeting is the last step that will determine if Balašev is willing to trust Sandro and we move forward with the operation."

"So what happens if Balašev decides he _can't_ trust Sandro and pulls out of the deal?" Lucretia wondered, inadvertently giving voice to what was the single biggest worry everyone had about the entire mission. There was no guarantee that Balašev would take the bait. All of the evidence dug up by Public Safety pointed to the man having several lucrative gun-running contracts not only with Padania, but with various factions of the main-stream mafia. For all intents and purposes, he in no way needed their money.

"He will," Enzo replied finally, trying his best to sound convincing. "This is the kind of thing Sandro did for years before coming to work for Section Two. He knows what he's doing and he's one of the best in the world. Balašev will agree to the contract." Even in Enzo's own ears, the words sounded hollow and forced. "Now watch your screen. We don't want to miss anything that happens."

Sighing silently to herself, Lucretia accepted the mild admonishment without complaint and turned her full attention back to her computer.

The screen displayed a wide, top-down aerial view of the remote mountain village of Lana's main street. Centered on the screen was an outdoor patio, where several sets of tables and chairs sat. Most of the tables were unoccupied, despite it being fairly close to lunch. But then, this close to the Alps, it was still early enough in the year for a cold, biting wind to occasionally drift down from the towering, snow-capped peaks. The chill breeze was strong enough at times to drive away all but the heartiest or most stubborn.

Among those few hearty souls willing to brave the spring chill were a trio of young women sipping cappuccinos and chatting animatedly. Each woman was framed by a small handful of shopping bags; trophies of a successful morning perusing the local shops, as well as those of nearby Merano.

The majority of the remaining few out on the patio were locals; men and women in their elders years and well-accustomed to the harsh vagaries of the weather. These sat off by themselves in tight-knit clusters of twos and threes, sparing a wave or friendly greeting to familiar passers-by.

The focus of Lucretia's attention – the focus of everyone's attention – was the pair of men seated apart from everyone else at one table. Both men appeared to be just into their middle years, with only the faintest traces of grey hair dusting their temples. While she couldn't see it from this angle, Lucretia knew that one of the men sported a thick black beard trimmed close to his jaw. His large, bold nose was rather strongly hooked and just shy of being considered beak-ish. Dark-coloured contact lenses turned ordinarily pale grey eyes into a deep chestnut brown. Several pounds of silicone padding and a subtle hunch made Alessandro seem both fatter and shorter than he really was, completing the disguise he wore. It was so effective, Lucretia mused silently, that she doubted that Petra, sitting beside him and sipping a cup of coffee, could even recognize him as her handler.

Hovering on the outside of the conversation between the two men and doing her best to go unnoticed, Petra was deeply immersed in playing the part of the flakey bimbo. She was wearing a knee-length dress of lacy red fabric that faded to black at the skirt. A pair of wide black leather bands ran across the front of the dress, cinching the waist and accentuating her chest. A plunging scoop neckline put an impressive amount of cleavage on display, enhanced by the padded strapless bra Lucretia knew she was wearing.

A full-body airbrushing treatment to darken her skin tone, prosthetic nose, brown contact lenses and a long, flowing black wig had turned the willowy redhead into a stunning young woman of full Italian pedigree. Petra's outward appearance had changed so much that the only way Lucretia had been able to identify her was through prior knowledge. If Enzo had not pointed her and Sandro out, she would never have recognized either one.

The other man sharing the table with Alessandro and Petra was tall and lean. Broad shoulders and a strong nose lent Yurik Balašev the appearance of imperial majesty that was only slightly marred by the fine lines crinkling the skin around eyes and mouth. Dirty-blonde hair kept immaculately cut and styled swept back from a prominent brow.

Dressed in a custom-tailored charcoal-grey business suit by Ermenegildo Zegna, which would not have looked out-of-place in Michele Pagani's wardrobe, Yurik Balašev was the picture of a man who was well into his middle years, yet fighting to recapture his youth. That he seemed to have succeeded in that goal, to a degree, was perhaps evidence of why he was so successful in his black-market ventures.

The aerial view afforded to Lucretia by the satellite feed gave her vision over the patio, as well as the surrounding streets up to three blocks away. Beside her, Enzo was monitoring a broader view of the town, watching every approach to the café and keeping a keen eye out for potential trouble.

Sitting behind the pair and facing the opposite wall of the van, support division agent Alfonso Rossetti was tuned into the microphone nestled inside one of the shopping bags perched beside Priscilla; one of the three young women seated at the nearby table. The lean, dour-faced blonde man had both hands lightly pressed to his headset, eyes closed in deep concentration to the words passing between the two men.

"What the Hell are they talking about?" Lucretia grumbled half to herself, not really intending to be heard or answered; merely voicing her continuing frustration at the sluggish pace of things. As such, she jumped slightly in surprise when Alfonso replied, without turning around or taking his attention from his surveillance station. "They're talking about _football_."

"Oh…uh, okay. Why do you seem so upset about that?" Lucretia wondered, noting the distinct note of contempt in the man's voice. "I thought you liked football?"

"_American_ football," Alfonso clarified, the sneering contempt even more in evidence now. "Apparently Balašev is a fan of one of their national league teams. The…Pittsburgh Steelers. He's bragging about how they just won the championship last month."

"American football," Enzo muttered darkly, sighing to himself in disgust. "Good Lord, the man truly _is_ a savage."

"Just one more reason to get him off of the streets, eh?" Alfonso chirped teasingly, earning a hearty chuckle from Enzo. "The last thing this world needs is another thick-skulled barbarian touting the acclaims of that garbage."

"Amen to that," Enzo said with quiet reverence, one hand pressed to his chest in salute. "Amen to that."

Lucretia rolled her eyes in exasperated wonder, resolving herself to not get involved. Stupid men and their stupid sports. Who cared who played what for whom? It all came down to a bunch of grown men running around like idiots and getting paid _ridiculously_ high amounts of money for it. How many of these so-called _athletes_ could plug the wings off of a fly from three hundred paces? How many could disarm and subdue an opponent twice their size while simultaneously returning fire to keep their opponents friends pinned down? How many could completely rewrite the security protocols of a government network server from three continents away in under three minutes while being back-hacked by counter-espionage agents from _six_ different countries and not get caught? It was ridiculous!

She would have gone on grumbling under her breath about the unfair absurdities of the world, but at that moment the connection to the satellite feed began to crackle and break-up. Cursing vehemently, Lucretia closed the video feed and pulled up the connection program. Within seconds she had traced the problem and begun typing out a dizzying flow of computer script that would have been utter gibberish to anyone else looking at it.

Breaking off his man-talk with Alfonso, Enzo turned his attention back to his cyborg, whose increasingly vulgar string of curses had him mildly concerned. "What's wrong?"

"The Goddamned Americans are trying to kick me out of their satellite again," she snapped back angrily, fingers continuing to fly in a blinding blur across her laptop's keyboard. "I don't know what the Hell is wrong with them; why can't the CIA learn to act like civilized human beings and share their toys?"

"You're absolutely right Lucy; the CIA are total jerks," Enzo replied sardonically, his voice oozing with sarcasm. "Why, it's almost as if we forgot to ask their permission before borrowing their eighty-million dollar spy satellite."

Lucretia froze momentarily, her jaw working soundlessly in the face of Enzo's cutting rebuke. She could feel her face burning red in embarrassment. She desperately struggled to come up with an appropriately smart-assed retort but, realizing that anything she said now would only serve to dig herself further into the ground, elected to not say anything at all.

"Is this going to be a problem?" Enzo asked quietly, dispensing with the scathing sarcasm and speaking instead with utter seriousness. Lucretia waved away his concern, frowning with renewed concentration.

"I'll be fine. It took the CIA almost two hours just to figure out I was even using their satellite, remember?

"Maybe so Lucy, but try to keep in mind that the CIA has entire teams of hackers whose only job is to hunt down and catch people like you. And believe me, if the CIA catches you playing around in their system, we will _both_ be long dead and buried before the Italian government manages to dig itself out of the shit storm Langley will dump on them."

Lucretia scoffed at Enzo's concern, flashing him an impish, insolent grin that would have done Marisa proud. "What? Catch me? Surely you jest? You must be thinking of some _other_ cybernetically-enhanced super-hacker Enzo; I can't _be_ caught."

She knew that she had pushed things too far the instant the words had left her mouth. Turning her head slightly, Lucretia peeked over at Enzo, who was fiercely scowling at her disapprovingly. She braced herself for the inevitable rebuke and was not left waiting long.

"And it's attitudes like that that get people caught in the first place," Enzo snapped angrily.

"I know Enzo; I'm sorry," she muttered in genuine remorse. "I don't know why I said that. Don't worry, I'll be careful."

What followed was a span of several minutes that were spent in uneasy silence. Enzo and Alfonso both hunkered down to focus on their own tasks, leaving Lucretia free to devote all of her attention on what she had to do. For a stretch of time, the only sound to be heard within the van was the frantic clatter of Lucretia's fingers flying across the keyboard. Sweat slowly beaded and rolled down her face and arms. It plastered the fabric of her thin cotton t-shirt to her chest and back.

Her pulse thundering in her ears, Lucretia thought that, at any moment, her artificial heart was going to tear itself free and explode out her mouth. She could feel her body twitching from head to toe from the adrenaline flooding her bloodstream. Eyes darting, fingers dancing, she threw off a dozen different fake IP trails in order to slow her pursuers down. They only managed to buy her a few seconds of breathing room, but every second was proving crucial. Whoever the boys at Langley had managed to dig up to hunt her, they were good. Almost frighteningly so. As much as it galled to admit that her technical hacking skills weren't up to the task, Lucretia knew that it was only through the grace of her enhanced physical abilities that she hadn't yet been caught.

In spite of it all, however, Lucretia found herself revelling in the experience. Regardless of how high the stakes were and the kinds of trouble she and Enzo would be in if she were caught, she felt an almost euphoric thrill from the excitement of the chase. Never before, in all of her memories, could she recall ever having faced such a challenge. All of her technical skill and physical ability was devoted to the singular task of evading capture. She was being pushed to the very limits of her physical and mental capabilities and she loved it.

After a seeming eternity spent perched nervously on the edge of his seat, Enzo was finally allowed to relax as, with a relieved sigh, Lucretia sank back in her chair, both hands pressed to her forehead. Glancing over, he could see that her satellite connection was back up, the laptop screen once again displaying the overhead view of downtown Lana.

"That was _way_ too close for comfort," Lucretia muttered crossly. She scrubbed her hands down her face several times before raking them back through her hair. "I think the CIA is running their own cyborg program, because whoever they had chasing me was way too damned good to be human."

"More likely they had a team of MIT graduates all working together to hunt you down," Enzo countered gently, still swallowing reflexively against the lump lodged in his throat.

Lucretia barked a dry laugh, grumbling sourly, "I guess I should feel flattered or something then, huh?"

Feeling emotionally and physically drained, Enzo let out a long, wearied sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose tightly between thumb and forefinger. "As long as you gave them the slip, you can feel any way you want. You _did_ give them the slip, right?"

"Of course I did," Lucretia replied, both irritated and insulted that he would doubt not only her abilities, but also her word. "It might have taken a bit more work than I was expecting, but I did it."

"Good," Enzo said shortly. Catching her eye, he turned to fix Lucretia with a firm, level stare. His voice, when he spoke, was calmly commanding; demanding her obedience. "Then I want you to pull out of their satellite."

Lucretia goggled at him dumbly, her jaw dropping open at the unexpected order. "What? Enzo why? It took me over a week to write the software protocols that got me in there. I just spent the last three hours dodging the best counter-hackers the CIA had to throw at me and now you want me to just give up and walk away? Why?"

"Because that's what I'm telling you to do, that's why," Enzo said sternly. "Don't make me pull rank on you Lucy; you know I hate to do that, but I will."

Lucretia continued to meet Enzo's hard glare for several long, protracted seconds before twitching her gaze away. Fuming silently, her face twisted up into a sour knot of burning resentment, she snapped out sullenly, "Yes sir."

Working swiftly and carefully, making sure not to leave any electronic footprints for the CIA to follow and trace back to her, Lucretia withdrew from the surveillance satellite. Shutting down her custom-made hacking programs, she slumped back in her seat, arms folded across her chest.

"So, now what am I supposed to do?" she asked, pouting slightly in a sharp display of dejected sulkiness. Enzo gave the matter some serious consideration, thinking hard on what she could do to fill the time. It had never really occurred to him, but with Alfonso monitoring the microphones and himself watching through the few public security cameras that were in place, there was very little for her to do but sit and wait.

A sudden burst of inspiration exploded within Enzo's mind and he instantly perked up. Twisting around abruptly to face Alfonso, he gave the man a light swat on the shoulder to get his attention. "What kind of car does Balašev drive?"

"A Mercedes S63 sedan, why?" Alfonso replied blandly, pulling up a few photographs of the can in question, taken by agents of Section One.

"Do you think you could remotely hack into the car's onboard computer?" Enzo asked Lucretia, ignoring Alfonso's question and instead turning his attention back to his cyborg. He looked at her expectantly, waiting for an answer. For her part, Lucretia stared over at him in blank confusion, her anger giving way to curiosity. "I guess so. Why; you want me to hijack the guy's car?"

"I want to have some kind of back-up plan ready and waiting in case he gets spooked and tries to run when we start to close in on him," Enzo replied in explanation. Lucretia and Alfonso both nodded in dawning realization, understanding the value of such foresight.

"You think he'll try to bolt?" Alfonso asked, leaning one elbow against the fold-down table carrying all of his equipment.

"I think it's better to be safe than sorry," Enzo said lightly, shrugging his shoulders. He then once again turned back to Lucretia. "How long will it take you to take control of the car's computer? Specifically, the anti-theft device?"

"A few hours, I guess. It depends on how much control you want me to have. I'm guessing you basically just want me to be able to remotely shut off the engine in case he tries to escape?"

"That's right."

"Then like I said, a few hours. It won't be pretty or anything special, but I guess I can slap together some kind of virus program that would fry the entire computer and render the car inoperable."

Enzo nodded slowly, agreeing to her assessment and suggestion. "Sounds good; get to it."

Without any further talk shared between them, Lucretia set about programming the virus. With her attention focused solely on that task, a steady silence once again took reign within the van and Enzo turned back to his own duties.

Twenty minutes of uninterrupted quiet followed, during which the loudest noise to be heard was Lucretia typing at her laptop and once when Alfonso coughed. As the minutes ticked by, Enzo felt a mounting sense of guilt weighing down on his mind. He was starting to regret having snapped at Lucretia so harshly. With the kind of work she did, an independent mind and personality was all-but mandatory in order to succeed. It was a quality he encouraged and it was unfair to punish her for doing exactly what she had been taught to do, and that was to question him.

"Hey Lucy?" he asked quietly, casting a sidelong glance over at her.

"Hmm?"

"I've been thinking about something."

"Really?" she exclaimed, shooting him a shocked, wide-eyed look. "Well I guess there really _is_ a first time for everything, isn't there?"

Enzo's jaw clenched tightly, his face falling into a hard, disapproving glower. Behind him, he heard Alfonso snicker softly, quickly muffled. "Very funny, you little smart-ass. Never mind then; forget I said anything."

"Oh, come on Enzo, don't be like that," Lucretia pleaded in a light, teasing tone, offering him an apologetic look. "You know I was only teasing."

"No, it's too late; I changed my mind. You don't want to listen to what I have to say, that's fine by me." Staring intently down at his own computer equipment, Enzo studiously avoided Lucretia's gaze, refusing to meet her eye.

Knowing that Enzo was only playing with her, but willing to follow along with the charade, Lucretia reached out with one hand, resting it delicately on his arm. "Enzo please don't be mad at me. I didn't mean it; really. Enzo?"

Enzo flinched away from her touch, twisting around in his seat to turn his back on her. This only added to the fun of the challenge and, sticking out her lower lip in a piteous pout, Lucretia stared up at her silent, unflinching handler. She gave him her best "puppy-eye" look, even managing to work herself up to the point of tears. "Enzo? I wuv you."

Glancing back, over his shoulder, Enzo rolled his eyes and sighed at the sight of her pleading face. Muttering under his breath, he slowly turned back towards her. Instantly the pouting lips and watery eyes were transformed, Lucretia flashing him a broad, triumphant grin. Giggling, she gave him a playful punch to the shoulder, saying teasingly, "Aw, I knew you couldn't stay mad at me. You know you love me."

Lucretia yelped in alarm as Enzo lashed out, shoving her forcefully enough to send her sprawling onto the floor. She immediately burst out into helpless giggling laughter. Crawling back up, into her seat, she had to fight to compose herself. One hand pressed against her middle, she held the other one up, towards him in a defensive, placating gesture. "Okay, okay, I give up. Truce?"

Smirking with self-satisfied amusement, Enzo bobbed his head, agreeing. "Truce."

"So, just out of curiosity," Lucretia ventured once she had mastered her giggles and regained control over herself. "What were you going to tell me, anyway?"

"Oh that. I was thinking about inviting you over to spend Easter with the rest of my family."

Lucretia felt the breath lodge in her throat, her mouth falling open in surprise. That was not what she had been expecting. Her vision grew misty as tears began to well up in her eyes. She was left completely blown away by his offering something so special and personal. While she had met his wife and children before on several occasions, to be granted the opportunity to share such a meaningful holiday with them was beyond anything she could have ever imagined.

"Are…are you serious?"

"Of course I am. You _are _a part of my family, after all. Besides, you've been doing some really good work lately and since you weren't able to spend Christmas with us, I thought it would be the perfect chance to make it up to you. If you're not interested though…"

He never got any further, as Lucretia stumbled and stammered in her emphatic haste to assure him that she was very much interested and honoured at the invitation. "It's been almost five months since the last time I got to see them all. I miss Mario and Adriana," she stated, referring to his six year old son and four year old daughter. "Not to mention the fact that I could really use Stephania's help with a project I'm working on."

"You never mentioned any kind of project. What are you working on?" he asked, immediately curious about any kind of computer-related work that required Lucretia to seek extra help.

"I've been working with Priscilla and some of the other analysts. We want to completely overhaul our data encryption software, re-writing the entire base-code if necessary."

Enzo had to stare askance at her momentarily, more than a little surprised at such a bold proclamation. "Wow, that's certainly ambitious. Are you sure you're up to that?"

"I'm not sure," she admitted, uncharacteristically open about something that she would normally consider an unforgivable failure on her part. "That's kind of why I wanted to talk with Stephania, get her opinion on things. Do you think she'd be interested?"

"Oh I know she would be interested," Enzo exclaimed, shaking his head wryly. "She spent almost a month straight after our tech-trade with the Americans bitching about how they ripped us off in terms of the new encryption software we got from Langley. She said it was basically just an old hand-me-down version of the CIA's own software that they weren't using any more."

"It is," Lucretia muttered sourly in confirmation. She folded her arms across her chest and stared glumly at her laptop. "I've seen the software that AISI is using and she's right: it _is_ just an obsolete version that the CIA pawned off on us. I'd be pissed too if I had to work with crappy American cast-offs."

"It's not that bad Lucy," Enzo said in an effort to placate and calm down his increasingly irate cyborg. He could tell the signs of an impending nerd rage building within her and had no desire to deal with that kind of hassle. "The Americans spend millions of dollars changing their encryption software every couple of years, regardless of whether they need to or not. The software they gave us works just fine and is still years ahead of what pretty much everyone else in the world is using."

Lucretia flashed him a hot, frustrated glare, snapping at him insistently. "That's not the point, Enzo. Italy is leading the world in producing the most advanced medical technology available; we shouldn't have to rely on American hand-me-downs. Besides, if we're running American encryption software, then no matter what tinkering our own boys did when we got it, it's still based off of American _de_cryption codes. How would you feel knowing that, at any time they want, the CIA can open up and read literally _all_ of our most sensitive of classified documents?"

"Oh come on Lucy; give our boys a little credit here," Enzo admonished. "Our technicians would _never_ have put the software into use if they thought there were any holes in it that could be exploited by anyone; including the Americans."

Lucretia snorted in derisive contempt, her face an open show of disgust. "And you honestly trust Langley not to have planted some kind of deliberate back-door protocol into the software before turning it over to us? Let's face it Enzo, the CIA isn't exactly known for playing fair."

Growling low in the back of his throat, Enzo cupped his face in one hand, slowly massaging his temples. He struggled to maintain control over his aggravation in the face of her stubbornness. He was beginning to reconsider his early assertions towards the value of her independent mind. "Okay, now you're just being paranoid. You're honestly starting to sound like one of those nut-job conspiracy theorists. Next you're going to tell me that the CIA was responsible for having Kennedy killed."

"Well, actually…" she began, the hint of a teasing grin twitching the corners of her mouth.

Enzo was spared having to cut her off and continue the argument, as at that moment, everyone's attentions were suddenly grabbed by a series of four sharp and forceful bangs against the back door of the van. The trio all shot surprised confused looks to one another.

"What the hell was that? Alfonso asked, his voice pitched low in a bewildered whisper.

All three froze instantly, faces snapping around to stare at the rear of the vehicle. They waited anxiously, breaths drawn and held against the expectation of a second knock.

That second knock came several seconds later, accompanied by the muffled sound of someone shouting. A third insistent knock followed hard on the heels of the last, along with more muffled yelling.

"Lucy, pull up the rear-view surveillance camera," Enzo hissed quietly, watching as she snapped to obey. He slid over marginally to give Alfonso room to sidle up and glance at Lucy's laptop screen.

She pulled up the relevant camera and all three were taken aback by the sight of an elderly Italian woman, at least seventy years old, standing at the back of the van. Wiry-thin and slightly hunched over, her deeply bronzed skin gave her an appearance reminiscent of a gnarled root. She wore a long, flower-print sundress with a lacy shawl wrapped loosely around her shoulders and held a silver-topped cane in one bony hand. Between the grim mask of her heavily wrinkled face and her determined, firm-foot stance, it was obvious to them all that this woman intended to remain there until whatever concerns had brought her had been fully addressed.

As the trio watched, the old woman brought the butt end of her cane up and wrapped it heavily against the door a fourth time. They could both see and hear her shouting at them in clearly mounting aggravation and anger. "Do you hear me? I know someone is in there, so you come on out or I'm going to call the police."

Enzo cursed viciously, raking a hand back through his hair. "Alfonso, get on the horn and call Jean, let him know what's going on over here. We need someone to get rid of this old bat before she completely blows our cover." Alfonso instantly snapped into motion, contacting the field headquarters to relay what was happening. In the mean time, Enzo and Lucretia could only sit and wait anxiously, all the while the old woman continued to pound and shout.

"Someone's on their way," Alfonso assured them a few moments later, easing some of the tension that had begun to knot up the muscles in Enzo's shoulders.

Evidently, Jean had wasted no time in sending someone out, as within only a scant handful of minutes after Alfonso had reported in, the trio saw a tall, well-built man approach the old woman. Dressed in dark grey coveralls, steel-toed boots and a thick yellow work coat emblazoned with the local regional water commission, the man held a bright yellow hard-hat under one arm. Dark hazel eyes glittered in perpetual impishness from out of a thin, high-boned face that seemed almost a match in artistic perfection to the alabaster statues that decorated the great Italian art houses and museums. Full lips that seemed ever on the verge of curling up into a mischievous grin were now set in a firm line.

Enzo growled low in the back of his throat at the sight of the man, cupping his face in the palm of one hand in a display of exaggerated exasperation. "Christ Almighty, why did Jean send Amadeo? The last thing we need is that pervert getting himself arrested for trying to feel-up this old lady."

"Don't be ridiculous Enzo; she has to be at least seventy years old. Amadeo may be a walking erection, but even he has his standards," Alfonso retorted dryly, snorting in derisive amusement.

"Yeah well," Enzo began in reply, shifting awkwardly in his chair. "I still wouldn't put it past him. I wouldn't be surprised if Amadeo tried to seduce her just to see if he could." That drew a light chuckle from Alfonso, who shook his head and sighed softly. "Just relax and try to have a little faith Enzo; it'll be fine."

With no other option available, Enzo was forced to accept Alfonso's assurances and trust in Amadeo's ability to deal with the situation. He sat and watched as the statuesque man strode purposefully up to the old woman, reaching out to lay one hand on her shoulder. He listened in over his headset as Amadeo spoke to her in a voice that was surprisingly gentle and soothing. "Ma'am is there something that I can…" Amadeo had to break off and immediately lunge backwards several steps, as the woman swung around with the butt end of her cane with blurring speed, aiming square for his head.

"Whoa; ma'am, calm down. What's the problem here?" Amadeo asked, throwing up his hands to both ward off the violently irate old woman and to present himself as not being a threat.

"I'll tell you what the problem is, boy: this van has been parked in front of my apartment building for the past four hours straight. I want it moved; now."

"Ma'am, we're with the Trentino-Alto Adige Regional Water Commission; we're just here doing some repairs on the sewer lines," Amadeo said, pointing to the water commission logo emblazoned on either side of the van, as well as the equipment strapped to the roof.

"Sewer lines? Don't you give me that load of nonsense. My eldest son, Enrico, is on the town council and if there were a problem with the sewer lines, I would have heard about it."

Amadeo fought to keep hold of his composure in the face of this old woman's stubborn obstinacy. Her aggressive demeanour had him badly flustered and fumbling for something credible to feed her. "Ma'am, it's just some regular maintenance, that's all. I doubt your son would have had any reason to mention it to you."

"Don't you raise your voice to me, you little punk," the woman snapped viciously, jabbing Amadeo hard in the center of his chest with her cane. The well-muscled former Special Forces soldier staggered back a step, hand flying up to rub at the spot where she had struck him. His mouth dropped open, incredulity painted across his face. Before he could respond, the old woman bulled onward, punctuating every other word with a hard wrap of her cane against he cobblestoned road. "I've raised five sons in my time; all of them bigger than you are. And I'll have you know that I can still put each and every one of them over my knee if I had to. So don't you think for one moment you can intimidate me, because you can't. I'll put _you_ over my knee if you try; see if I don't."

His temples beginning to throb painfully from repressed anger and mounting frustration, Amadeo swore bitterly to himself, wondering what Karmic deity he had crossed to have deserved such a nightmare in punishment.

Inside the van, watching and listening with rapt attention, the _fratello_ pair and support division man were fiercely engaged in a battle of their own. Enzo had both arms pressed tightly to his ribs against the racking pains afflicting him, born of the struggle to keep from laughing uproariously. Arms wrapped about her middle, Lucretia rocked gently back and forth in her seat. Tears streaming down her face, she was chewing on her lower lip in a valiant effort to hold back the waves of giggles swelling within from overwhelming her. Alfonso had one hand pressed tight over his eyes and his entire body shook in silent laughter.

"Enzo," Lucretia whimpered quietly, her voice squeaking and trembling. "Please, make it stop. I think I'm going to pee myself." Enzo could only shake his head helplessly, feeling the utmost sympathy for his girl. If this went on much longer he thought his bladder might burst as well.

They all watched as, outside, Amadeo continued to slog onward in his battle of wills against this one old woman. She was currently engaged in calling Amadeo a thief, accusing him and his still unidentified cohorts hiding inside the van of studying the area in preparation for a big robbery job. He was visibly distressed now, as evidenced by the way his hands kept clenching and unclenching at his sides. He seemed to be desperately resisting the urge to wrap his hands around her throat and throttle her to death. A small crowd had begun to gather as people passing by stopped to see what all of the commotion was about.

They were very nearly exposed when, out of the blue, the old woman swung around with her cane and delivered a stinging blow to the side of Amadeo's head, shouting at him in indignant fury. "You filthy little pervert. I saw you trying to look down my dress. That's it: I'm calling the police and having you all arrested."

Enzo's ribs felt as if they were about to tear themselves apart from the strain of holding in the laughter. Tears streamed helplessly down Lucretia's face. Squirming and wriggling in her seat, she was squealing softly into the one hand she had clapped tightly over her mouth.

Much to everyone's relief – and to Lucretia's bladder's eternal gratitude – Amadeo was eventually able to pull the elderly lady aside and explain to her something of what was really going on. Telling her that he was a member of AISE, he fed her a credible story about their conducting a sting operation against the local mafia clan. After demanding to be shown some identification to validate his alleged identity, Amadeo flashing one of his government-issued fakes, the woman seemed satisfied and stalked off.

"Thank you God," Lucretia whispered in glorious praise. "I didn't think she would ever leave."

Wiping the tears from his eyes, Enzo ventured out cautiously, trying play up the lighter side of the situation. "Well at least we aren't bored any more."

"My only regret is that no-one is ever going to believe us when we try to tell them about this," Alfonso sighed with exaggerated sadness.

"Oh, I wouldn't be too sure about that," Lucretia said slyly, her face breaking out into an evil, mischievous grin and immediately drawing both men's attentions. "I took the liberty of streaming the camera feed to my laptop's video recording software. I have the whole thing saved to my hard drive." Alfonso and Enzo stared at her in open, slack-jawed astonishment, neither one able to find the appropriate words to respond to this revelation.

"You…you did what?" Enzo said hesitantly, the shock he felt numbing his brain and making intelligible thought and speak all but impossible.

"I recorded the camera feed," Lucretia explained again with exaggerated slowness. "If anyone doesn't believe us when we tell them that Amadeo got chewed out and beaten-up by a seventy-year-old grandmother, we have the video evidence to prove it to them."

Enzo's open-mouthed gape was swiftly replaced by a beaming smile as Lucretia's words sank in and he abruptly surged forward to embrace the surprised girl, hugging her tightly and enthusiastically to his chest. "Oh, that's my girl," he said, laughing heartily. "I swear to God Lucretia: I have never been more proud of you than I am at this moment."

Returning his hug with equal fervour, Lucretia felt a surge of pride course through her, tempered only slightly by the fact that she knew that he was half-joking in his statement.

Watching the pair, Alfonso gave an exasperated shake of his head and turning back to his surveillance equipment. Switching the audio channel back over to the microphone hidden within Kara's shopping bags, he focused his attention back on the continuing conversation between Alessandro and Balašev.

It took him several moments to work through the bewildered confusion that filled him when all that he heard was the scraping of wrought-iron chairs against smooth stone and the exchanging of idle pleasantries. Realization struck him full in the face and, cursing under his breath, he swung around towards Enzo and Lucretia, hissing at the pair sharply. "Knock it off you two; the meeting is breaking up."

Feeling rightly embarrassed and ashamed at having allowed themselves to become so distracted from their work, the _fratello_ immediately snapped back to work. Enzo pulled up video feeds from several security cameras that overlooked the café and nearby areas. Lucretia held herself at the ready, fingers hovering over her laptop's keyboard in anticipation. It was game-time, and she was ready.


	9. Chapter 08: Occupational Hazards

Chapter 08: Occupational Hazards

Alessandro swept his eyes slowly and carefully across the outdoor patio; maintaining a close watch on everything that was going on around him. With practiced ease he kept one ear tuned to what Yurik Balašev was saying, lest he miss some important detail that he might be asked about later.

Seated across the table, the smug, bombastic Albanian was still going on about his personal opinions on sports, including his love and appreciation for American football. Sandro smiled inwardly at the thought of his colleagues having to suffer through the long-winded sermon touting the sport. Some of them, he knew, were rather vehement and inflexible sporting snobs and would undoubtedly be gnashing their teeth in indignant affront.

Continuing his slow sweep, Sandro spared a glance for the trio of young women seated several tables away, each one surrounded by shopping bags. Priscilla and Kara he recognized easily enough, but it took him a moment to dig up the name of the third woman. It had been some time since he had worked with her as fellow members of SISMI and even then they had had little cause to associate with one another. Cecilia Campiglione, a somewhat plain-faced woman in her early forties, had been an agent for some ten years before Sandro joined.

The difference in age, along with difference in operational departments, had served to keep their paths separate. He knew next to nothing about her, but the fact that Director Lorenzo had pulled her from SISMI to assist in this operation spoke volumes of the Section Chief's opinion of her. Sandro made a mental note to himself to speak with Costante about her later. The man had been a member of her department during his tenure with SISMI, so he should know something of interest.

Cecilia's inky-black hair was pulled back and gathered at the nape of her neck in a loose bun. Layers of make-up granted her a kind of stately handsomeness that nature never had. A loose, sage-green blouse was tucked into a flowing full-length skirt that flapped and fluttered around her bare ankles in the stiff late-morning breeze.

Kara wore a powder blue cashmere cardigan over a cream-coloured camisole. Hip-hugger jeans served to accentuate her long, lean legs. Her glossy black hair was tied back in a simple, utilitarian tail that bobbed and bounced in time to each miniscule movement of her head.

Dressed in a long, flower-print sundress and light jacket, Priscilla was her typically warm, bubbly self. Her wavy, shoulder-length dirty-blonde hair swaying about her heart-shaped face, she chatted animatedly with her two companions, laughing at jokes made and waving her hands about to emphasize something about whatever was being said.

In stark contrast to Cecilia's almost manish features, Kara and Priscilla were both stunning young women. Sandro noted, with no small amount of amusement, that they drew the eyes of the older men seated at other tables around the patio. The lingering looks and faint grins they shot the pair served to show the clear appreciation they all felt for the positive change in the usual scenery.

Sitting right next to him, head tilted slightly to the side and cupped in one hand, Petra looked every inch the perfectly pretty, empty-headed piece of arm candy that she was disguised as. She stared intently at Yurik, appearing to hang off of every word the man said. She was not without her own appreciative onlookers. With Sandro seated beside her however, the older men were careful to keep their looks more circumspect, lest they be caught ogling.

"That is absolutely fascinating," Petra breathed softly in response to Balašev's latest statement. "I had no idea American football was so complicated."

Yurik grinned broadly, bobbing his head appreciatively to Petra. "But of course, my dear. American football is primarily a game of deep, complex strategy. You are interested in the sport?"

Petra returned the Albanian's grin with a small, coy smile of her own. Her response was playful and teasing, delivered in a soft, husky voice. "Oh yes, indeed. All those big, strong, handsome men running around, getting all dirty and sweaty; what is there for a girl not to like?"

His grin broadening even further, Yurik sat back in his seat and let out a hearty, good-natured chuckle. "Well I suppose you have me there, my dear."

Smirking faintly at the exchange, Sandro reached up with one hand to scratch idly at the fake beard that he wore as a part of his disguise. After nearly a week of wearing it, the adhesive paste used to glue it to his face was beginning to itch maddeningly. It was fortunate, then, that the operation would soon be over. With any luck, by this time tomorrow, Yurik would be in custody and Sandro could ditch the disguise; and the infernal beard.

Continuing to maintain his slow, casual survey of the surrounding area, Sandro was content to sit and wait while Petra flirted with the Albanian arms dealer. The more relaxed the man was, the more apt he was to make a mistake. The pair chatted and laughed, Petra being careful not to appear too forward, lest she end up tipping the man off. She _was_ playing the part of Sandro's girlfriend, after all.

Clearing his throat roughly to get the other man's attention, Sandro decided after several minutes had passed that it was time to start reeling Yurik in. "Forgive me for interrupting, Signor Balašev, but perhaps we could continue?"

Blinking in something of a dazed stupor, Yurik favoured Sandro with a sheepish, guilty grin. Realizing his mistake and how it could be perceived, the man slowly lifted his hands up in front of himself in a placating, apologetic gesture. Leaning back in his seat, Yurik bobbed his head curtly in agreement to Sandro's gruff request. "Of course, of course; no apologies necessary." In stark contrast to Yurik's casual tone, the easy smile he flashed failed to lessen the hard, appraising look in his eyes. A fact that was not lost on Sandro.

After a momentary hesitation, during which Yurik signalled to the lone waitress hovering just inside the door to the café and ordered a tray of crackers and various hard cheeses, mostly Edam and emmenthal, to be brought out, he went on. "Now then, Signor Sanguedolce, why don't we get down to business? I understand from our past correspondences that you wish to open up an investment portfolio with my company?"

"That is correct, Signor Balašev," Sandro replied evenly, arms crossed loosely on the table before him as he leaned in towards the other man. Inwardly, Sandro grinned wryly at the clever choice of words. On paper, Yurik was a senior broker for a middling-level investment firm with several hundred clients from all over Italy. In reality, however, Yurik was the owner of the company and it was a front for his weapons trafficking business. It was more than slightly sickening to think that hundreds of normal, average, middle-income families were inadvertently financing the buying and selling of illegal firearms and ammunitions; weapons that were likely to be used in turn to terrorize and harm other families just like theirs.

The two men quickly fell into the process of negotiations with spirited enthusiasm. The quarter-of-a-million Euros that Sandro had been given leave to bargain with could buy a fairly respectable arsenal and it was simply down to working out how much of what he wanted to buy. To any outside observers, they gave all the appearances of being deeply involved in arguing over the various fine points of the policy agreements. Yurik had a sheet of paper set out in front of him and he periodically scribbled figures down upon it, sliding it over to Sandro to look over. Sandro would then make a show of fussing over certain numbers, frowning and scratching some out, writing new ones down and sliding the sheet back to Yurik. It was on this sheet of paper that the real negotiations were happening, with each number and string of letters detailing various models of firearms, quantities and prices.

Petra sat back, lounging in her seat and adopted a rather bored expression. Feigning disinterest in the conversation, she let her eyes wander haphazardly, her gaze never resting on one spot for more than a few seconds before moving on.

With the day creeping on towards noon, the tables were beginning to fill as the regular lunch crowd gathered to eat and socialize. Careful to filter out the brief, broken snatches of conversations that floated all around her, lest they form an incomprehensible tangle of senseless cacophony, Petra kept her ears dutifully trained on the sounds of Sandro and Yurik's voices.

Eyes trailing off to her left, Petra allowed herself to linger a few moments at the picturesque view afforded to her by the gently sloping lawns across the road. A community dating all the way back to the Roman Empire, the town of Lana had been built in a broad, shallow valley in the lower foothills of the Alps. A small, minor tributary of the mighty Adige River cut along the town's northern edge, separating the main body of Lana from the more rural districts. Gazing out across the river, Petra could see the tidy, well-tended rows of fruit orchards and vineyards spreading across the hills; the terrain beginning their slow, rolling rise towards the distant mountains.

Dotted with trees and flowering shrubs, the long, winding parkland offered shaded walking paths that followed the river's course, snaking between carefully tended beds of flowers. A broad boardwalk jutted out several feet over the river, with benches spaced evenly along its length for people to pause, rest and enjoy the view. A large, white-washed gazebo was just visible to Petra as she peered over her shoulder and she could make out a group of local children starting up an impromptu soccer game in one of the many open, grassy areas.

The wind shifted suddenly, blowing in from across the park and filling Petra's nose with the scent of the flowers and grasses growing there. For the briefest of moments she luxuriated in the peaceful tranquility of the setting. She wished fervently that this moment could stretch on forever. With her handler at her side, a glass of wine in hand, the mountains in the distance forming a stunning backdrop, she couldn't ask for anything more, or better. It was perfect.

Petra jumped slightly as a sudden harsh, barking laugh brought her attention crashing back down to reality. Her heart thumping wildly in alarm, she flicked her eyes about in a rapid, slightly panicky sweep of the area. Finding everything to be fine, she heaved a slow, soft sigh of relief. A faint flush of embarrassment crept up into Petra's cheeks at having allowed herself to become so distracted.

She twitched again in alarm as the sudden and unexpected feel of something buzzing in her lap. Almost immediately realizing that it was just her cell phone, Petra muttered darkly under her breath, chastising her own foolish flakiness. Digging out the offending device, Petra flipped it open to find a text message waiting for her. A slightly frown creased her face as she read the sending address, seeing that it had come from Kara.

Resisting the urge to glance over at the other girl, Petra opened and read the message. _"Are you ok?"_

Embarrassed that her little slip-up had been noticed, Petra quickly typed out a response and fired it back. _"Ya, just spaced out a bit."_

Flipping the phone closed, Petra began to slip it back into her purse when she paused, considering. She then pulled the phone back out and, flipping it back open, began typing out another message to Kara. _"OMG, can u believe this guy?"_

Propping one elbow on the arm of her chair and rested her head in that hand, Petra sat back to awaited Kara's response. She smiled thinly, feeling rather pleased with herself for the clever idea. She _was_ supposed to be playing the part of a ditzy young woman who spent her time shopping, clubbing and hanging off of her sugar-daddy boyfriend, after all. It would be perfectly natural and expected of her to bury her nose in her phone as a means of escaping the boring conversation the two older men were having.

Peeking over at Kara, Petra watched as her fellow cyborg checked her phone, frowning in clear confusion. There was a momentary pause as Petra waited for Kara to respond, before her phone buzzed faintly in her hand. Opening the message, she let out a quiet chuckle at Kara's blunt, simple, _"?"_ reply.

"_Yurik. He just went on & on about that stupid sport,"_ Petra typed, careful to keep from growing too distracted and missing something important happening around her.

"_O__h that. Yeah, what a windbag."_

Grinning wryly, thumbs darting across the tiny buttons of her cell phone's keyboard, Petra kept up the exchange. _"I know. I swear to god, 30 more sec. and I'd of pulled my piece on him and blown his brains out."_

"_LOL__."_

"_Why is it that, whenever we hear of Monty going undercover, it's to some swanky cocktail party where she gets to eat caviar and schmooze with millionaire tycoons and exotic princes?"_

"_Oh, trust me Petra; I've talked to Triela about what our resident Bond-Girl gets up to between visits and I can assure you that for every cocktail party Monty attends, there's a string of at least half a dozen dirty, smelly holes in the armpit of the Middle East or south eastern Asia somewhere behind her."_

Petra burst out giggling at the sudden image of prim-and-proper Monty, with her perfectly styled hair and immaculately clean and crisp clothes, crawling around in some dark, dirty tunnel in Afghanistan, or slogging through the damp, fetid jungles of Cambodia.

Fingers posed to type out her reply, Petra abruptly realized that Sandro and Yurik had both fallen silent. Glancing up from her phone, she found both men staring at her wonderingly. Thinking quickly, she assumed an expression that was equal parts confusion, indignation and disgust.

One slim eyebrow arched, her lips curling into a faintly contemptuous sneer, Petra snapped out venomously, "Uh, do you mind? This is a _private _conversation." Both men, rolling their eyes exasperatedly, turned back to one another and resumed talking. She gave them a couple of seconds before, smiling inwardly, she went back to her message to Kara.

"_Yeah, well, I'd still like the chance to go to at least one swanky party and schmooze a bit. All I ever get are sleazy mob goons or greasy informants."_

There was a noticeable pause afterwards before Kara responded. Flicking a glance over at the other girl, Petra found her hunched over her phone, fingers flying, a look of thoughtful concentration set on her face.

_Geeze, what is__ she doing over there, writing me a book or something?_ Petra wondered silently as a full minute went by with Kara still typing. Finally, Kara straightened, Petra's phone buzzed and, _"Petra, I've been to some of those kinds of cocktail parties with Michele. There are NEVER as many hansom young millionaires and charming princes at them as the movies make it seem. Mostly it's old, overweight businessmen who spend most of their time either leering at your chest or trying to slip a hand up your skirt."_

Petra spent several moments glaring down at Kara's message, her face scrunched up in a frown of supreme indignation. She knew that Kara was probably right, but still. What was wrong with a little harmless imagining?

"_Oh, shut up and leave my fantasies alone, you party-pooper. ;p."_ Petra heard Kara burst out into quickly-suppressed giggles after the brief pause it took for the other girl to receive and read the message.

"_Okay, fine__; I'm sorry. Heaven forbid I should burst your bubble. But I'm a little curious to know what Sandro would think of you hanging out with all these cute guys?"_

A sudden storm of emotions swept through Petra upon reading that message. Anger, resentment, fear and shame make a nauseous snarl in the pit of her stomach. What _would_ Sandro think of that? Would he see it as some kind of betrayal? Would he be hurt and insulted at the thought of her wanting someone else? But she _didn't_ want anyone else. Sandro was the man she loved; the _only_ man she loved or could ever love.

Heart thundering, chest heaving with frantic, panicky breaths, Petra fought desperately to keep her face smooth, lest she betray the inner turmoil she was feeling to the two men seated only feet away. Her stomach roiled sickeningly and the taste of bile splashing up into her throat made Petra swallow reflexively. She wasn't betraying Sandro with her thoughts. She _wasn't_! Was it so wrong of her to entertain thoughts of admiring the fine form of some hot young men and enjoy some harmless flirting? It wasn't as if she would actually be interested in any of them. And besides, as Kara had said, these handsome millionaires and charming princes didn't even exist. It was just idle fantasy on her part. Nothing more.

With that realization, Petra's thoughts calmed, her stomach settling as the tyrannical claws of the agency's Conditioning relaxed its hold on her mind. She managed a thin smile as she typed out her reply to Kara, even throwing a hint of flippant arrogance into the message. _"What's to think about? It's not like I actually want any of them. I'd just like to…admire the scenery. You don't go to the Uffizi expecting to take home one of the paintings, do you?" _There was a long, drawn-out pause afterwards, during which Petra heard Kara burst out into surprised laughter, eliciting a broader grin.

"_Touché,__"_ Kara finally messaged in response, conceding the superior logic of Petra's argument. Grinning triumphantly, Petra closed with cell phone with a sharp _click_ and slipped it back into her purse.

Throughout the exchange, and even during her near-complete-breakdown, Petra had still managed to keep an ear trained on Sandro's conversation with Yurik and even remembered to glance up to look around once and a while. As such, it was not as big of a shock to her when the pair abruptly rose and reached across the table shake each other's hand. Yurik had been glancing down at the sheet of paper, now covered in scribbled writing, and nodding satisfactorily at what he saw there. Petra knew that the handshake signalled the end of the negotiations and that the meeting was at an end.

"You will not be displeased with my company's services, Signor Sanguedolce, I can assure you of that," Yurik was saying. "You do understand, however, that it will take some time to…draw up all of the paperwork and have it ready for you?" Sandro immediately began waving off Yurik's concern, even before the other man had finished speaking. His reply, hard on the heels of Yurik's warning pronouncement, was delivered in a gruff, yet not unkindly tone. "Of course, of course; that won't be a problem. When can I expect you to have it ready?"

"Oh, I shouldn't expect it to take anything more than a day or two to put together. I trust you find that acceptable?" The man waited for Sandro's affirming nod before going on, his face breaking out into a broad, friendly grin. "Excellent. I believe then that this calls for a celebratory toast."

Petra was caught slightly off guard when Sandro suddenly leaned in towards her, resting one hand lightly on her bare shoulder and giving it a gentle, caressing squeeze. Despite her best efforts, Petra couldn't help but give a slight, involuntary gasp at the feel of his touch. Tiny, electric tingles radiated down her arm, making her shiver. Her stomach fluttered weakly and she felt herself starting to blush.

_Stupid,_ she mentally berated herself. _You're better than this. Sandro and I have made out before in order to maintain our cover; all he's doing is touching me. _

_So why do I feel like I'm about to faint?_

With supreme effort, she managed to shove the thoughts and feelings aside and focus on her handler. Sucking in a deep, steadying breath, she prayed that the artificial tan hid her embarrassed blush from his eyes.

"Renata my dear," Sandro was saying in a soft, endearing tone. "I have a few more things to discuss with Signor Balašev and I know it would just bore you; why don't you go freshen yourself up before we leave? Your makeup is looking a little smudged and you know how much you hate having anything out of place."

Embarrassment flashed instantly to alarm as a storm of conflicted feelings washed over her. On the one hand, the very thought of leaving her handler alone with the Albanian arms dealer left Petra feeling slightly sick to her stomach. But his two key comments, "look" and "out of place" were code that he wanted her to sweep the inside of the _trattoria_ for potential threats and she couldn't very well refuse a direct order.

Remembering to stay in character, Petra thrust out her lower lip in a petulant frown, speaking in a softly simpering whine. "But Armando, you know how much I hate to be away from you for more than a moment even more."

"Now, now Renata, don't be like that. I think you can survive on your own for a couple of minutes." Sandro's words, delivered in a teasing jab, belied the firm, intent stare he fixed on her, holding it until at last Petra reluctantly agreed. Sighing glumly, she pushed herself to her feet, smoothing down the hem of her dress and hooking one long, flowing lock of raven-black hair behind an ear. As she turned to walk away, Yurik began talking once more, picking up the conversation right where he had left off.

Sandro watched Petra disappear into the _trattoria_, the hem of her dress swirling about her knees. Back straight, head held high, her hips swayed entrancingly with each smooth, graceful stride. Behind her perfect mask of cool, imperious poise, no one would have ever imagined there to be anything in the world capable of shaking her calm composure.

Sandro knew better.

It had been impossible for him to not notice her reaction to his simple touch. Something was bothering her and he needed to find out what it was. Hopefully it wouldn't prove too bothersome a problem. He needed her clear-headed and focused.

Across the table from him, Yurik was still going on about various types of wines and the merits of each. He was currently in the process of touting the strong qualities of a locally brewed and bottled vintage of _pinot grigio_. It took Sandro a moment before realizing that Yurik had stopped talking, having asked his opinion on the wine.

Sandro replied simply, turning back to face the other man. "That sounds fine, Signor Balašev. I'll trust to your superior knowledge of the local vintages." He paused at the end, seeing that Yurik's eyes weren't on him. There was a hungry, almost predatory look in the man's dark orbs and his lips were curled up into an appreciative smirk. He frowned as, following Yurik's gaze, he found it locked squarely on Petra's retreating back. The man's eyes moved in time with each seductive sway of her hips.

"Enjoying the view?" Sandro asked, mouth twisted into a wry grin. Yurik's eyes snapped back to Sandro sharply in a most satisfactory manner, a rather embarrassed look filling the Albanian's face. "My sincere apologies, Signor Sanguedolce. I…I did not mean to stare. It's just that…well, if I may be so bolt, you have exquisite taste in women."

"Thank you."

"I must admit that I find myself feeling rather jealous, actually," Yurik admitted slowly. Their wine arrived then and Yurik took a small, experimental sip from his glass before nodding appreciatively to the waitress. He abruptly burst out laughing, waving one hand dismissively as he spoke. "Not that I ever find myself wanting for female companionship mind, but she is certainly of a rare breed not seen very often." His voice dropped to a low, husky whisper then, as if he were thinking aloud without realizing it. "What I would give for a night spent with a creature like her."

His heart lurching inside his chest as a result of the other man's assertion, Sandro allowed no trace of the astonishment he felt from showing. He controlled himself to just a faint grin and slightly amused chuckle. Yurik's words set off a storm of thoughts swirling and rampaging through Sandro's head; he could almost feel the gears beginning to spin and churn.

The first inklings of a plan began to take root within Sandro's mind. New possibilities; unanticipated openings, spread out before him. If Yurik was saying what Sandro thought the man was saying, than he was suddenly being presented an almost unprecedented opportunity. It was almost too good to be true. The only question was: did he dare take it? And while Sandro would never have categorized himself as being a gambling man, there where times when you just had to take a risk and hope for the best. It was just a part of the business. Avise would have phrased at as taking a "leap of faith" while trusting in God to be there to catch you.

Wetting his lips hesitantly, Sandro sighed under his breath. _It's time to roll the dice. _"Well then, Signor Balašev, perhaps something could be…arranged?"

Yurik's face darkened noticeably at Sandro's words. His lips compressed into a thin frown, eyes hooded as he eyed Sandro suspiciously. "What do you mean?" he asked cautiously.

Sandro shrugged offhandedly, taking a slow, casual sip of his wine to draw out the moment before responding. Yurik was right: the sauvignon _was_ good. "It's like the Americans are so fond of saying: everything is negotiable, yes?"

"Why?" Yurik pressed, not even close to being convinced by so simple an argument. "Is she not your woman? What kind of man simply tosses aside a creature of such beauty as her?"

"I wouldn't go so far as to say she's my woman, Signor Balašev," Sandro exclaimed, laughing heartily. "She's simply a companion that I keep around for certain…fringe benefits, shall we say? Benefits that I find myself paying quite extravagantly for, I might add."

"I…see," Yurik said slowly. "And what exactly would this…negotiation end up cost me?"

"Oh, I don't know," Sandro said, idly rolling his wine around in his glass. He met Yurik's eye with a firm, level gaze. "I'm a generous man. Why don't we say: ten percent off?" The other man gaped at him openly in disbelief, eyes bulging wide. It took Yurik several moments to find his voice, but when he did, he could not hold back the loud, incredulous laughter that burst forth. His whole body shook from the force of his mirth and he soon was forced to wipe tears from his eyes. Through it all, Sandro continued to maintain the same calm, level stare.

"T-Ten percent?" Yurik gasped, having finally composed himself once more. "Surely you jest? Signor Sanguedolce, while I admit that the girl may have a phenomenal body, she is still just a girl. She is not worth twenty-five thousand Euros; certainly not simply for the privilege of spending a night with her."

"I am open to negotiations, Signor Balašev," Sandro replied with a sly, thin-lipped grin. Inside, he was laughing heartily at the joke Yurik had unwittingly made. _Not worth twenty-five thousand Euros? Oh, if only you knew, my friend._

Yurik's interest peaked, the pair jumped eagerly into the process of negotiating a fair price. Back and forth the figures flew, until at last they had settled on a final price of just under eleven thousand Euros, to be deducted from the cost of the weapons shipment.

By the time Petra returned, both men had sat back in their chairs, glasses of wine in hand. Expressions of supreme satisfaction filled their faces, though for very different reasons. She managed to catch Sandro's eye and give him a firm, meaningful look. Understanding, he reached up to absently scratch at one earlobe, signalling his acknowledgement.

Her arrival seemed to signal the end to the meeting and, downing the remaining contents of their glasses, both men rose to their feet. Reaching across the table, Sandro clasped Yurik's outstretched hand and gave it a firm, genial shake. With a few final words of parting, Yurik promising to contact Sandro when his "investment portfolio" would be ready, they each turned to go their separate ways.

"What did you find?" he asked as soon as they were a sufficient distance away. He couldn't help the thin edge of incredulity the crept into his voice. Sending Petra in to sweep the restaurant's interior had been a move of paranoid habit. He hadn't actually expected her to find anything.

"I'm not sure," she admitted rather sheepishly. She clung to his arm, all but hanging off of him. Her head was titled to the side to rest lightly on his shoulder and she was nervously fiddling with the wristband of her watch. "It's probably nothing, but you always told me to take note of anything I thought might be wrong, no matter how small."

Sandro nodded his agreement, his voice pitched low, for her ears alone. He doubted that anyone standing more than four or five feet away could have heard more than a dull murmur. "That's because it's the small things you overlook that usually end up getting people killed." Despite the quiet intensity of his words, they also carried a strong note of approval at her having taken his many lessons in the espionage game to heart. "So what did you find?"

Without any further hesitation, Petra launched into her report. "I spotted this guy sitting all alone at the far end of the patio. He looks like he might be a local, but he was keeping to himself and avoiding eye contact with everyone around him."

"Maybe he's just shy?" Sandro offered half-jokingly, watching Petra closely out of the corner of his eye. She frowned, shaking her head slightly. "Maybe; but he has a newspaper with him and it was on the same page when I came out as when I went in. Not only that, but I noticed that his heart and respiration rates were elevated and he was sweating pretty heavily."

Stepping up to the driver's door of his rented charcoal gray Alfa Romeo 159, Sandro paused with his hand on the handle. Hesitating a moment before pulling open the door, Sandro silently mulled over Petra's information. It wasn't much to base an investigation on and chances were that it would just be a waste of time. The man could simply be a slow reader. And if being anti-social were grounds of suspicion, then every public security agency in the world would be so deeply mired in back-logged work that they would grind to a halt under the weight. But there was always that small, almost insignificant chance.

"You're right," Sandro said, slipping in behind the wheel. "It's probably nothing. But just to be safe, I want you to give this guy's description to Jean and Enzo when we get back to the apartment."

"Understood."

Starting up the engine, Sandro pulled out, into the street and smoothly accelerated away. They sat in silence for a time, Petra staring impassively out the window. With the day rolling on past noon, the sidewalk was growing crowded as people began to make their way back to work from lunch. Small clusters of laughing children darted amidst the crowds, enjoying the freedom afforded to them by both the weekend and warming spring weather. Sandro kept his gaze focused out the windshield, silently dreading what was about to happen. Petra's report had allowed him to put off the inevitable moment of his having to tell her about his deal with Balašev, but now he was faced once more with the prospect of filling her in.

While the second generation cyborgs were not hindered by the chemically-enforced sense of affection for their handlers that the first-gens were, their engrained sense of loyalty and devotion were just as strong. And as Petra, as well as other of her fellow second-gens had proven, they were just as capable of falling in love with their handlers all on their own. It left Sandro feeling unsure and anxious about how those feelings would react to what was about to be required of her.

"Hey Petra, there's something I need to talk to you about before we meet up with everyone back at the apartment," Sandro stated abruptly, pulling the girl's attention away from the picturesque scenery. "There's been a small change to the plan. I talked with Yurik while you were inside and I found an opening that will enable us subdue and capture him without any risk to the rest to anyone else."

"Really?" Petra exclaimed, eyes widening in amazement. "That's great Sandro; how did you manage that?"

Taking a deep breath to steady his nerves and strengthen his resolve, Sandro proceeded to lay it all out for her. In short, clipped sentences he related the events that had transpired in her absence. From his catching Balašev checking her out to the details of the deal itself. At the end he fell silent, bracing himself and waiting for the explosion. It came quickly, though not for the reasons he had expected.

"You want me to do what?" Petra shrieked, eliciting a painful wince from her handler. "I can't believe this, Sandro; how could you possibly ask me to do something like this? It's humiliating!"

Trying to calm the near-hysterical cyborg down, Sandro spoke to her soothingly. "Calm down Petra, it's not that bad. All…"

"Not that bad? Are you serious? You basically just sold him my…my _services_ for the night; like some kind of high-priced prostitute! Do you have any idea how that makes me feel?"

"That's ridiculous Petra; I'm not asking you to actually sleep with the man; just to make him _think_ that you will so he invites you back to his villa and you can get inside to secure him."

"So I just have to endure a night of that dirty old pervert staring down my shirt and feeling me up every chance he gets. Great, that's _so_ much better than not having to actually sleep with him," Petra snapped back venomously, pale green eyes aflame with anger. "I don't suppose you ever stopped to consider what everyone else is going to think when we tell them?"

His brow furrowing in confusion, Sandro shot her a quick, bewildered look. "What the hell does that have to do with anything?"

"Everything!" Petra said, anger flaring. Throwing up her hands in a show of extreme exasperation, she slumping back in her seat, arms folded beneath her breasts. "There are enough rumours about us swirling around the agency as it is."

"_Madre di Dio_, is _that_ what this little tantrum is about? Petra, I don't give a damn about what other people in the agency think about our relationship and neither should you."

"Well that's easy for you to say Sandro. You have the luxury of leaving to go home at night; I don't. I have to live with these people and I'm constantly surrounded by it. I know what they're saying about me, about us, behind my back. Most of the other girls think I'm nothing more than your private sex toy and those that don't are so jealous of our relationship that they won't give me so much as the time of day.

"It's even worse when I hear it from the staff. The things I hear them say about you…I hate it. I hate it so much and there's nothing I can do. I'm so torn between my feelings for you and my loyalty to the agency that it makes me want to throw up. And because of my Conditioning, if I ever dare catch myself thinking about what I want to do those people who are talking about you like that, that I _do_ end up having to throw up."

Pulling the car over to the side of the road, Sandro reached over to wrap one arm around Petra's shoulders. Hugging her close, he rested his cheek on the top of her head. Anguish and sympathy over what she was feeling filled him near to bursting. Her flash of petulant rage had turned sharply to sullen misery. He was fully aware of the reputation he carried within the agency, brought over from his time serving with Public Safety. He was used to the mocking jabs and contemptuous sneers of his colleagues. The notion that Petra was being made to suffer because of it, however, was one he had never considered.

"Petra, I'm sorry. But you need to understand that I've been living with those rumours and opinions for virtually my entire career. They don't bother me. So whatever you might hear people saying about me, I don't want you twisting yourself up inside thinking you need to somehow defend my honour, because you don't."

Petra sighed disconsolately, reaching up to squeeze his hand. "I know that. But it still makes me so angry. I know that sleeping with all of those women was just a part of the job for you, but they make it sound as if you were some kind of a degenerate pervert. And now when people find out about this new plan, they're going to think that I'm just whoring myself out to Yurik on your order."

"Well that's _not_ what I'm asking you to do," Sandro retorted sharply. "I'm not asking you to whore yourself out Petra. I'm not asking you to do anything that you haven't done already as a part of this mission. All I want is for you to flirt with him, the same way you did just now during the meeting. Keep him off-balance and focused on you, so that he doesn't see the noose tightening around his neck." She silently nodded her understanding, though with a face still set in a gloomy frown. Thinking to himself, Sandro figured that it was perhaps time for a little humour to pick her spirits back up. "And as for people thinking you're just my personal sex toy, that's just insane. How long did it take you to convince me to so much as kiss you?"

That drew a quiet, hesitant giggle from the girl, who shook her head wonderingly at the memory. "Almost eight months. You would hardly have anything to do with me before then."

"Yeah, and it took you almost vomiting all over the floor of my apartment to convince me to so much as _think_ of wanting to kiss you," Sandro replied cheerfully, grinning and hugging Petra tighter at the sight of the thin smile beginning to tug at the corners of her mouth. He held her like that for several more long silent minutes, luxuriating in the feel of her body pressed up against him. It was amazing what this one girl had wrought within him. After Rosanna, Sandro had never believed himself capable of falling in love with another woman ever again. It was incredible how these girls, with their mechanical bodies and brainwashed minds, could at times seem more human than most human beings.

Pulling back, Sandro cleared his throat softly while straightening in his seat. "Well, we have a couple of hours before we need to meet up with everyone, so what do say we drive up to Milano and do some shopping? You're going to need a new outfit if Yurik is going to be taking you out to diner, and seeing as how it's mission-related, I can probably get away with charging it to my expense account."

Sniffing disdainfully, Petra folded her arms beneath her breasts once more and turned away from him in a show of petulant scorn. Turned away because she didn't want to the irrepressible grin breaking out across her face. "You're just trying to bribe into not being mad at you anymore."

"Is it working?" Sandro asked, grinning mischievously. Eyes narrowed to thin slits, she twisted her head around to glance over at him. Pausing to consider, she reaching up to tap one finger thoughtfully against her lips before responding. "I don't know. How nice of an outfit?"

"You'll have even Kara turning green with envy."

"Well, I suppose it's a start," she said after a time, sighing dramatically and giving a sharp flick to her hair.

Sandro smiled, chuckling to himself. Throwing the car into drive, he pulled back out, onto the road. "Good enough for me."

It was almost three hours later before Petra found herself seated on a low, old sofa that was almost certainly near a decade past its prime, her wig plopped down on the arm beside her. The thing squeaked every time she shifted; the cushions were thin, threadbare things that allowed the springs beneath to poke and jab at her. The springs themselves were stretched and worn out, allowing the entire sofa to sag noticeably towards the middle, where Kara sat doing her best to ignore the dingy, squalid surroundings.

On the opposite end of the sofa, Lucy sat with the rickety old coffee table, with its cracked, faded and peeling paint, drawn up close. She was hunched over, her face buried in her laptop. Aside from the voices of their handlers and the other senior support staff discussing the new plan Sandro had devised in the other room, muffled slightly by the closed door, the sound of Lucy's fingers rattling across the keyboard was the only sound to be heard.

Across the room, splayed out on her stomach with feet idly bobbing back and forth, Rico was flipping through a magazine that she had picked up somewhere. Her CZ75 handgun was perched on the bedside table beside her. Dismantled, cleaned, oiled and reassembled earlier, it was back in its dark brown leather holster, ready to be taken up.

"I can't believe Sandro actually spent so much money buying you a couple of outfits," Kara said wonderingly, filling the awkward silence in the room. Petra turned from her blank-faced study of a crack in the plaster ceiling to regard the other girl. The willowy brunette was peering at the array of half-a-dozen boutique bags clustered around Petra's feet. "There must be at least two thousand Euros' worth of stuff here."

"Um, forty-seven hundred, I think," Petra offered hesitantly in clarification. She then began to run through the extensive list of items she had picked out over the course of their three hours of shopping. "Two dresses, three shirts, three skirts, a nice cashmere cardigan, a cute lingerie set, a pair of heels, two pairs of flats, a purse, a couple of necklaces, a bracelet, three pairs of earrings, some perfume and a new watch."

"You managed to buy all of that in only two hours of shopping? Wow Petra, you've got skills," Kara exclaimed approvingly.

Petra blushed at the compliment, shrugging her shoulders dismissively. Under ordinary circumstances, she would have been happy to bask in the praise. Knowing what most of the clothes were ultimately intended for, however, served to greatly temper those feelings. "Well, all of the stores were close together, so it's not like we had to drive around all over the place."

"That may be so, but I'm still genuinely impressed," Kara insisted. Having overheard the conversation between Sandro and Balašev, she knew that her cyborg sister was probably feeling in need of some small cheering up. "Remind me to invite you out the next time Michele and I head in to Rome, shopping."

Not looking up from her laptop, Lucy snorted derisively. "What I can't believe is that they gave Sandro such a big promotion."

Kara glanced over at the other girl, confused. Petra threw Lucy a darkly suspicious glower, her words short and clipped. "What is that supposed to mean?"

Lucy chuckled quietly to herself, her voice laced with a mocking humour. "Well it just seems to me that being promoted from gigolo to pimp is quite the step up in the world."

Petra instantly surged to her feet, knocking aside and scattering the boutique bags. Her face burned hot with indignant anger. Eyes bulging wide, jaw working soundlessly, it took several moments for her brain to catch up and form the necessary words to respond. "You take that back, you little bitch! Sandro is not a pimp and he was _not_ a gigolo!"

"Whoa, Petra calm down and relax, okay?" Kara said quickly, jumping up to position herself in front of the fuming redhead.

"Don't tell me to relax!" Petra shrieked, lunging forward against Kara's frantic attempts to hold her away from Lucy. "I'm going to rip her damned face off, is what I'm going to do! Stupid nerd is just jealous of my relationship with Sandro."

"Relationship? Is that what you call that?" Lucy scoffed, glaring scornfully up at the other girl. "For your information, you bubble-brained bimbo, my relationship with Enzo is just fine! And at least I don't have to be on my back, naked, with my legs in the air just to get my handler to want to spend some time with me!"

"Damn it Lucy, would you shut up?" Kara snapped, struggling to keep hold of the squirming, flailing Petra. Already she could feel a bruise starting to form under one eye where the other girl's fist had connected. "Rico, would you help me out here?"

Watching the exchange with rapt fascination, Rico hopped off the bed and strode quickly over to the trio. Reaching out, the diminutive blonde grabbed Petra by the upper arms, planted her feet and locked position. As much as the much taller girl fought, she was helpless in the face of the vastly greater physical strength of the first generation cyborg.

With Petra secured, Kara immediately turned her attention to Lucy, who was now also on her feet and advancing. She threw herself at the slightly shorter girl, slipping around to wrap both arms around her chest. Lucy flailed fiercely in the grip of Kara's bear-hug, all the while continuing to hurl insults back and forth with Petra. The pair's voices quickly rose in volume and pitch, rapidly approaching decibels that would surely have left a normal human's ears ringing.

All at once, the door to the outer room crashed open, slamming back on its hinges. A red-faced, furious Jean was outlined in the doorway, with the other handlers and support staff visible beyond his shoulders. "What the hell in God's name is going on in here?" he barked savagely, causing all of the girls except Rico to flinch back reflexively. Jean's own cyborg, used to her master's angered outburst, only glanced over at him expectantly.

There was a faint pause before, in a rush, Kara began trying to explain the situation. Her efforts were impeded by Petra and Lucy's own frantic attempts to explain themselves. Naturedly each blamed the other for the commotion. That they each paused from time to time to snap at one another only worsened things.

"That's enough," Jean snapped, cutting off the three cyborgs' frenzied squabbling. Angry, frustrated and exasperated, he reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose. A dull ache behind his eyes throbbed with what was sure to be the precursor to world-class migraine. "I don't care what is going on in here. We're trying to organize the arrest of an internationally wanted arms dealer, so sit down and shut up, or I will have all four of you sedated." Without waiting for the meekly submissive chorus of "yes sirs" from the girls, Jean turned back and slammed the door shut behind him, leaving left three very abashed looking cyborgs to slowly stumbled away from one another and resume their seats on the couch.

Rico only stared at the door, a look of puzzled bewilderment on her soft round face. "Why would I be punished? I didn't say anything."

"Guilty by association I'm afraid," Kara sighed. "Sorry about that, Rico." A dark cloud seemed to pass over her face then as she turned to regard Lucy with a severe glower. "And you: are you out of your mind? What the hell were you thinking?"

Lucy huddled in on herself slightly, shrinking back from the furious stare of the irate Asian cyborg. "It was just a joke Kara."

"Well if that was your idea of a joke, then you have a really twisted sense of humour," Kara snapped back. "And you should know better than to make fun of another cyborg's handler. What if it was Enzo being made fun of? How would you react?"

Lucy had no response to that and could only hang her head in shame, her face burning red from embarrassment. After a while she managed to mumble out a weak "I'm sorry," that did nothing to appease the other girl. "Well don't apologize to me Lucy; it wasn't _my_ handler you insulted."

For a time all Lucy could do was sit and stare. Her deep, burning resentment prevented anything more than strangled sputters from escaping. Before long, however, shame – and Kara's intent glare – overrode pride and, with a deep, grumbling reluctance, she shifted her gaze from Kara to Petra. "I'm sorry I made fun of Sandro, Petra." For her part, Petra only sniffed haughtily, fixing Lucy with a glare to rival Kara's for intensity.

"And as for you Petra," Kara resumed, swinging around to stare down at the now surprised girl. "I know you're upset about Sandro's plan, but from a strategic point-of-view it _does_ make sense to do it this way."

"I know that Kara," Petra pouted. "I _did_ talk to him about it, after all."

"Well then what you should have realised, but probably haven't thought about, is the fact that, with Sandro's change in the plan, the success of this entire mission now rests on your shoulders."

"Meaning?"

Irritation at Petra's sullen behaviour, Kara resisted the sudden impulse to reach down and shake some sense into her. There was just no getting around the fact that she was sulking stubbornly, like a child who had just been chastised for throwing a tantrum. "Meaning that Sandro is relying on you to pull this off on your own, without backup. And given the fact that Sandro is a man known for playing it safe, for him to decide to change the plan at the last minute means that he has complete faith in you. He trusts you to be able to do this Petra."

"I...guess you have a point," Petra admitted slowly, reluctantly. "But that doesn't really make me feel any better."

"Why?" Kara asked insistently, easing herself back down to sit beside Petra. She placed a comforting hand on the other girl's shoulder, forcing her to turn to meet her gaze. "Is it because you still see it as Sandro having…sold you to Yurik?" She had been about to say "pimped her out" but thankfully realized at the last moment that that would likely have been a disaster.

She went on doggedly at Petra's stiff-necked nod and faint blush. "Petra, you've been trained to be more than just a combat cyborg; you're a spy. That kind of thing is, for better or worse, a part of the job. I'll bet you that Monty's had to use her…feminine wiles in order to get information out of people."

"What? That's ridiculous," Petra exclaimed, torn between the desire to gape in disbelief and burst out laughing at the idea.

"Why? She's a spy and she knows that sometimes you do what you have to do to get the job done. You remember the Monaco job? She didn't hesitate to strut around the dance floor in order to distract the casino guards."

"That's completely different," Petra protested firmly. "Doing a sexy tango with your own handler is a far cry from being asked to be some arms dealer's hired piece of tail."

"True," Kara agreed, nodding slowly. "But that doesn't change the fact that Monty would do even that if it meant getting the information she needs.

"Oh I guarantee you that she wouldn't like doing it and no doubt Jethro would have to suffer through her complaining about it for weeks afterwards, but she would still do it."

Petra sighed wearily, slumping in her seat to rest her head against the back of the couch. She knew that what Kara was saying was true. It _did_ make perfect sense and she _did_ understand why Sandro had made the decision. Unfortunately, all of the logical arguments in the world did nothing to change how she felt about it.

Her face suddenly broke out into a broad grin, thinking about Monty being forced to tag around with some sleazy _Mafiosi_ for a night; hanging off of his arm, laughing at his dumb jokes, batting her eyes and flirting with him. The thought brought her back to her earlier text-message conversation with Kara. As guilty as she felt about taking some modicum of pleasure at the idea of Monty being in such a degrading position, it _did_ make her feel better about her own situation.

"Okay fine Kara, you win; I'll stop sulking."

"Great," Kara said, brightening up noticeably. "In that case, you can start showing me what you bought." That brought another chuckle to Petra, who shook her head wonderingly at Kara's almost unflappable exuberance when it came to all things shopping-related.

Over the next hour, the pair spent their time going through each and every item that Petra had bought on her shopping expedition with Sandro. Kara commented admiringly on the backless, floor-length evening dress of shimmering grey silk. The dress was cut to hug Petra's body all of the way down to the knees, where the skirt flared out slightly in a classic mermaid style. The narrow, plunging neckline was embroidered with silver thread work and inset with tiny chips of semi-precious gems. The detailing continued down the front of the dress, ending just below the sternum. The same embroidery detail was worked along the open sides of the dress, forming a broad triangular band at the small of the back.

"This is gorgeous Petra," Kara cooed softly, letting the material play across her hands.

"Thanks," Petra said, accepting the dress back from Kara and slipping it back into its protective sleeve. "I wish I could take credit for the find, but Sandro was the one who picked it out."

"Well then the man certainly has an eye for fashion, I must say," Kara said cheerfully before moving on to the other articles of clothing.

At one point even Rico jumped into the discussion, eying the lace-trimmed satin lingerie set with a mix of awe and bewilderment. "I don't understand," she said hesitantly. "What's the point of having such fancy underwear? I mean, isn't the point of why they call it "underwear" because you _wear_ it _under_ your normal clothes? So it's not like anyone's going to see it."

Petra and Kara stared at Rico blankly for a moment, turning to regard each other and then burst out in helpless giggles. Even Lucy, who had stayed deliberately out of the fashion discussion, joined in with the giggling. "Never mind Rico, it's not important," Kara said at last, wiping away tears from her eyes.

After the impromptu fashion show was over and everything was back in their bags, Kara and Petra settled back on the couch to wait for the meeting between their handlers and the other support staff to conclude. Petra went back to staring aimlessly about the room, and while no words were spoken, the deliberateness with which she avoided looking over in Lucy's direction told Kara that there was, unsurprisingly, still some smouldering resentment.

Kara rolled her eyes, thinking about all of the recent drama she had had to put up with. Between Lucy fighting with Melanie, Melanie fighting with Nina, and now Lucy fighting with Petra, Kara felt as if she were being run off of her feet trying to keep up with and manage it all.

_Now I know how Triela feels, being the first gens' Den Mother,_ she thought to herself. _I am _so_ going to have a talk with Michele about giving me a raise in my allowance._

A short time later, everyone's attention was pulled towards the door by a sharp knocking. Almost immediately, Enzo and Sandro slipped in, the two handlers arranging themselves against the wall. Without any kind of preamble, Enzo jumped into things. "Alright girls, we've finished going over the game plan for tonight and this is what is going on: we expect Yurik to contact us tonight with the drop location. Sandro and Petra will go to deliver the money, as expected. Also, at that time Petra will join Yurik for what we expect to be a night of dining and dancing."

"Like we talked about before Petra," Sandro said, taking up the explanation smoothly as the other man left off. "All I want you to do is flirt with him. Keep Yurik relaxed, off-balanced and focused solely on you."

"Because we don't know where he plans to take you, or what his basic plan for the evening is, we can't have teams in place to back you up beforehand. We're going to have to play this one by ear. Two teams of support staff will shadow you from a distance, but don't rely on them being able to get there in time if you find yourself in trouble.

"We can safely assume that Yurik will be taking you out to dinner at some high-end restaurant, so we plan to have Michele and Kara in place inside as on-site back-up. But aside from that, you're going to be pretty much on your own."

"When he takes you back to his villa, work on keeping him relaxed. Then, when you find an appropriate moment, hit him with this," Enzo said, tossing a small, cylindrical object to Petra. She caught the item out of the air easily, holding it up to inspect more closely. The object turned out to be an auto-injector; one of the newer models that used a cartridge of compressed gas to force the medication through the skin and directly into the bloodstream.

"That injector is filled with a concentrated dose of midazolam," Sandro explained. "Jab him with it and he'll be unconscious within seconds. Then just send word to us and we'll move in to collect them and we can go home. Simple as that."

Into the silence that followed, Kara hesitantly spoke up. "This may be a stupid question, but why don't we grab Yurik when you and Petra go to deliver the money?"

"Because we're not only after Yurik," Sandro explained. "He's just a lead into tracking down whoever inside H&K is selling their weapons to terrorists like Dante. So to find that out, we need any and all information stored on Yurik's computers at his home."

"Okay, but that still leaves us able to storm his house and seize his computers once we have him in custody, right?"

Enzo watched the exchange calmly, arms folded across his chest. When Kara fell silent, patiently waiting for an answer, rather than replying, he instead turned to address his own cyborg, still working away on her laptop. "You want to take this one, Lucy?"

The girl nodded silently in acquiescence, gently lowering the screen of her laptop before launching into an explanation. "Obviously in these kinds of missions, we have the _Guardia di Finanza_and our own analysts try to dig up as much of the target's financial records as possible, in order to track down their suppliers and buyers. Unfortunately, the only money trails we could link to Balašev were the normal, mundane kind. Nothing to do with his weapons trade. This means he must keep his important business records stored on a computer in his home; one he deliberately keeps disconnected from any kind of public network; which, obviously, makes it impossible to hack into."

"I understand all of that," Kara replied, cutting in when Lucy paused briefly in her oration. "But that still doesn't explain why we can't just break into his house and seize those computers after-the-fact."

"One of those mundane money trails led us to a nineteen year old college student by the name of Marcello Ragusa. He was expelled for hacking into the school's database in order to steal exam outlines and then sell them to other students. He also admitted to making and selling custom-order computer viruses. Balašev was one of his customers. The virus Marcello sold him was benign, designed to integrate itself into a system and then lay dormant. When activated, it wipes the entire hard drive and then completely fries the entire computer. I took a look at the source code he used in programming it and I can safely say that it would be impossible to pull any kind of data off of the system afterwards.

"Unfortunately for us, it's entirely conceivable that Balašev has the virus linked to his home's security system. If the system is tripped, then the virus goes active and wipes the computer."

"Isn't that kind of risky?" Rico asked curiously, having perched herself on the edge of the bed to watch and listen. "What if it's just a false alarm?"

Shaking her head softly, Lucy folded her arms across her chest, turning slightly to address Rico. "Obviously the virus doesn't kick in right away. There's probably a few minutes' delay just in case something like a false alarm happens; time enough for Balašev to get up and type in a deactivation code."

"Precisely," Enzo agreed, giving Lucretia a quick, bobbing nod of approval. She smiled thinly, returning his nod, before turning back to her laptop. "We don't know how long of a grace period we would have to try and deactivate the virus ourselves or if it's even possible. Lucy was pretty impressed with young Signor Ragusa's skill. Our simple lack of information has us at a disadvantage and we just don't want to take any unnecessary risks. Grabbing Yurik inside his own home gives us the best chances of securing both him and his data."

"Are there any more questions?" Sandro asked, glancing about the room to each individual cyborg in turn. When no one spoke up, Sandro nodded, satisfied. "Then grab your things Petra; we need to head back to our villa to get ready and wait for Yurik's call."

Nodding her mute acceptance, Petra rose from the couch and began gathering up the numerous boutique bags scattered around her, with some help from Kara. As she and Sandro were about to leave, a sudden call from Lucretia made her stop and turn. The other girl seemed to struggle with herself, face twisted into a sour knot. Her shifted her gaze about uneasily, unwilling to meet Petra's eye. "Petra, wait. I…I just wanted to, um…apologize. I know I don't always think before I say things and, well, this isn't exactly the first time it's gotten me into trouble. So I'm sorry, okay?"

Silent and glaring, Petra stood staring at Lucretia. Her eyes thinned to slits, lips compressed and curled into tight frown, she fought down the desire to snap back with something spiteful. However, the look in her eyes said that, despite the grudging, grumbling tone of Lucretia's apology, she was being sincere. The fact that Kara was there, standing with arms folded beneath her breasts, staring at Petra with a pointed, meaningful look certainly didn't help.

Finally she sighed, rolling her eyes slightly. "Okay sure, whatever Lucy. I'll see you later."

"Oh wait; I also wanted to give you this." Calling out a second time, Lucretia reached out to grab Petra by the arm, holding out a compact USB flash drive.

"What is this for?" Petra asked, accepting the thumb-sized device with a slightly suspicious glare.

"If you can, once you get inside Yurik's villa, try to find his main computer, the one most likely to hold all of his business data on it, and then plug that into the back."

"Why? What is it for?" Petra asked, repeating herself.

"When you plug it into Balašev's computer, it will open up a back door in the firewall and send out an encrypted wireless signal that I can access to gain complete control over the system,"

"So that's what you've been working on?" Enzo mumbled softly, half to himself. Lucretia ignored him and pressed on with her explanation.

"From there, I can transfer all the data on the hard drives without any risk of it being erased," Lucretia said, continuing on as if Enzo had not spoken up. "Seeing as how we can't be sure if Balašev has some means of triggering the virus remotely, like from his cell phone or something, using this will mean you won't have to worry about his being able to destroy any sensitive information we need before you can subdue him."

"Oh, I…um…uh…th-thanks," Petra stammered awkwardly, taken slightly aback by the gift. If Lucretia was right, and the device did work, then all of Petra's attention and efforts could be devoted exclusively to keeping Yurik distracted and taking him into custody when the time came. It was a significant weight off of her shoulders.

While it was still something of a grudging thought, Petra was forced to admit that maybe Lucy wasn't such a smart-mouthed bitch after all.

"That's very impressive Lucy," Sandro offered in praise. "That will certainly make Petra's job much easier; thank you. But now we really must be going. Petra?" With that, and one last backwards glance, Petra gathered her things and followed after Sandro.

Back inside their rented car, driving back towards the small villa they had rented on the outskirts of Merano, Sandro and Petra sat in an easy, companionable silence. The back seats were filled with Petra's trophies of their afternoon of shopping. "Just so we're clear on something," Sandro said abruptly, surprising Petra. "I have no problem spending time with you. Even if you aren't naked with your legs in the air."

Petra's jaw dropped open, her eyes bulging wide. A burning heat began suffusing her face as she blushed a brilliant shade of red. From her neck to the roots of her hair, Petra's entire face was veritably aglow with embarrassment. "Y…you heard that?" she managed to squeak out weakly, staring at him in abject horror.

Chuckling softly, Sandro threw Petra a faintly wry, bemused look. "Petra my dear, half the people in that apartment building heard that little comment. The two of you weren't exactly being discreet in your arguing."

Petra frowned in thought, her embarrassment fading at a sudden, deeper implication of Sandro's revelation. "What is someone calls the police? We _were_ pretty loud; someone could have thought it was some kind of domestic dispute."

"I wouldn't worry about it, Petra," Sandro reassured the nervous cyborg. "There's a reason why Jean chose that particular building to set up our field headquarter in: it's not exactly in the best of neighbourhoods after all. The majority of the tenants are either junkies or drug dealers and none of them are going to call the police over something as trivial as a domestic dispute."

"Oh, I see. All right then." Satisfied with her handler's explanation, Petra settled back once more into an easy, relaxed silence.

Eventually arriving back at their rented apartment, Sandro and Petra carried in her bags and then spent the rest of the afternoon trying to keep busy. The pair spent a couple of hours just relaxing on the couch, watching television. The only shows on at that time of day were news reports, soap operas and the occasional lame game show. Most national news programs were talking about the country's ongoing problems with Padania and the various terrorist acts that continued to crop up every couple of weeks. For a pair of spies and assassins, who lived most days in the middle of those news reports, hearing about it all again from people who had only a passing familiarity for what was really going on did not really appeal to them.

They found better luck in the soap operas, managing to catch the second half of _Un Posto al Sole_. For thirty minutes, Petra got to enjoy the experience of watching one of her favorite television shows while snuggled up against her handler. She sighed contentedly, her head resting against Sandro's chest, one of his arms drapped loosely around her shoulders, holding her close.

When television started to lose its allure, Sandro opted to go into one of the apartment's two bedrooms for a nap. They had both been up and going since around four in the morning. Pausing on the threshold, he turned back to look at her. "Care to join me?" he asked casually, a slow, creeping smile spreading across his face. Petra did not need to be asked twice.

Afterwards, Petra sank back onto the mattress, panting from exertion. Her bared chest heaved up and down as she reached up to brush away beads of sweat and matted strands of hair. She shivered as an errant breeze trailed across her naked, sweat-slicked skin. Her entire body still tingled from the intensity of the experience. Her legs were trembling so badly that she doubted they would have supported her if she had tried to stand.

"Well that was a fun way to kill an hour," Sandro quipped lightly from beside her. He leaned over, his smooth, youthful face filling Petra's vision and setting her heart racing with renewed vigour. She cooed softly, moaning against his lips as he kissed her, one hand gently rubbing and massaging her hip.

Almost crying out in disappointment when he finally pulled away, Petra watched as Sandro swung his legs over the side of the bed and heaved himself up to his feet. She quickly suppressed a self-satisfied giggle of glee at noticing that Sandro wasn't all too steady himself as he silently padded over to the bedroom door.

"I'm taking a shower," he said, glancing back over his shoulder. His breath caught in his throat at the sight of her splayed out on the bed. Hair mussed up, naked body glistening from head to toe, she was absolutely gorgeous. "And for the sake of my continual good-health, you stay here. I'm not sure I have the strength to survive another encounter like that." He paused, thinking, and then chuckled. "Not so soon, anyway," he added.

While waiting for Sandro to return, Petra managed to recover enough strength to get up and peel off the now dirtied sheets, exchanging them for fresh, clean ones from the linen closet. Returning to the bedroom, she fished around in the pocket of Sandro's coat until she came up with his pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Popping one into her mouth and setting flame to tip, she drew in a deep, luxuriating breath of the sweet, tantalizing smoke. Holding in her breath, the nicotine slowly saturating her lung tissue, soaking into her bloodstream, Petra instantly felt her nerves beginning to calm, the lingering jitteriness in her limbs subsiding. She exhaled in one long, smooth stream, smoke coiling upwards into a wispy, blue-grey halo that enwreathed her head. She could remember a time when she hated the taste and just a single puff was enough to have her almost doubled over retching from disgust.

When Sandro was finished his shower, Petra took her turn under the hot spray to sluice herself off. Clean and dry, she returned to the bedroom where she resumed her place at Sandro's side. Curled up together, they both fell asleep in each other's arms.

The sudden, beeping wail of the alarm clock going off some three hours later startled Petra back to wakefulness. Shifting and squirming under the sheets, she groaned into her pillow in petulant protest. Clamping the pillow tight to her ears, she stoically refused to acknowledge the devilish device's screaming summons.

"Come on lazy, get up," Sandro teased. "We need to start getting ready and I've got to reapply your skin treatment; the dye is all blotchy and streaking from your shower."

Grumbling and fuming, Petra only dug herself deeper into the mattress. "Just five more minutes." Her voice, thick with grogginess, was muffled to the point of incomprehension by the pillow.

"No, not in five minutes; now." Sandro reached down and, in one smooth motion, yanked the blankets off of his dozing, redheaded cyborg. She squealed in shock as the cool air hit her still naked skin and she instantly curled up into a protective ball, huddling in on herself for warmth.

Whining piteously, Petra stared over her shoulder at Sandro, giving him a watery-eyed puppy-dog stare. "Sandro, what the hell? I'm cold and I'm naked. Give me back the blankets."

"Well then, the quicker you get that cute little ass of yours out of bed, the sooner I can fix your makeup and you can put some clothes on. I have a fresh pot of coffee brewing; it should be ready by the time we're done. So let's go; get up."

Her pleading stare turning to a sullen glare, Petra quickly scrambled out of bed and began padding towards the bathroom. She harrumphed loudly as she strode by Sandro, arms wrapped protectively around her chest. "You can be a real slave-driver sometimes, you know that?"

"Really? Does that mean I can buy myself a whip and leather outfit?" Sandro replied, teasing. She didn't bother dignifying the comment with a response. Sandro followed close on her heels, kicking the bathroom door shut behind him.

Two hours, a cup of coffee with some lightly toasted bruschetta and one phone call later, Petra stood examining herself in the full-length mirror, her eyes slowly trailing a path up and down her body. Almost an hour gone, Yurik had finally called with the location for their meet, where Sandro would deliver the first half of the money, as well as turn Petra herself over into Yurik's care. Butterflies the size of pigeons swirled about her stomach in nervous anticipation and apprehension.

Staring at her own reflection, Petra could feel her cheeks heating and plucked ineffectually at the dress, trying to hike up the neckline in some vain attempt to cover herself more. The smoky grey material encased her from chest to knees, moulding itself to every subtle curve. The feel of the cool, smooth silk playing against her bare skin made Petra aware of her body in ways that she would never have thought possible. And it was so _sheer_! Staring at her reflection in the mirror, she could see that the fabric was indeed opaque, but still! It certainly _felt_ thin enough to see through.

Her ears perked up at the faint sounds of footsteps, coming closer. Shifting her position slightly so that she could see the bedroom door in the mirror, Petra waited. The door swung open to admit Sandro, who was dressed in a darker charcoal grey suit with subtle pinstriping. "Are you ready yet? We have to leave in…" Sandro broke off as his gaze fell on her, words dying on his tongue.

"So? How do I look?" she asked, grinning and preening under his scrutiny. She gave a quick, graceful pirouette, rising up on her toes, arms held out to her sides like the wings of a swan. And why did that thought trigger some strange, tickling sensation deep in the back of her mind? The hem of the dress flared out sharply before slowly settling back around her ankles, like a leaf drifting down on a gentle breeze. Posing with one hand on her hip, the other idly playing with her narrow, diamond and sapphire-studded bracelet, Petra flashed Sandro a beaming smile.

Swallowing reflexively, Sandro ran one hand back through his hair. His pale grey eyes flickered up and down the length of Petra's body, drinking in the sight of her. She could hear the sound of his heart pounding inside his chest as it sped up markedly. "Petra you…you look…" he stammered, taking several hesitant, uneasy steps towards her.

"I look…what?" Petra asked teasingly. "Cute? Pretty?"

"Gorgeous," Sandro breathed. Coming to a stop directly in front of her, he reached out, hands hovering scant centimetres away from Petra' bare shoulders. His hands quivered with the effort of holding himself back. "I'm almost afraid to touch you," he said with a wry, self-deprecating chuckle, forcing himself to take a single, large, step back. "I'm not sure I'd be able to make myself stop."

Petra beamed at the unsuspectingly grand compliment, her angelic smile spreading from ear to ear. A sudden, heady warmth suffused her body and before Petra knew what she was doing, she was closing the distance between her and her handler. Her bare feet sank into the thick, spongy nap of the carpet, silencing her footsteps. Reaching out, her arms snaked around Sandro's neck, pulling herself closer. "I'm sure we can spare a few minutes," she heard herself say. Rising up on her toes, Petra lifted her face to his. She let out a soft, moaning sigh as their lips met and locked in a deep, passionate kiss that went on for the better half of eternity. She could feel Sandro's heart beating against her chest; hear his pulse roaring in harmonious counter-point to her own.

All too soon, Sandro was gripping her by the shoulders, pushing her back. Petra let out a piteous whimper as their lips broke contact, leaving a long, dangling trail of saliva dancing and quivering between them. "Petra stop; we can't do this. Not here, not now."

"But why?" she moaned, trying to step back into his arms. His face set in a determined frown, Sandro held firm to her shoulders, keeping her back, away from him. "Sandro I want this. I…I need this. Please?"

Sandro shook his head sadly, causing Petra's heart to plummet down into her feet. She felt sick to her stomach from the intensity of her disappointment. "We have a job to do, remember? We need to meet Yurik for dinner in half-an-hour and it's a twenty minute drive to the restaurant."

"I understand," Petra mumbled. Crestfallen, she turned away, walking slowly and miserably over to her shoes. Before she had taken more then three steps, however, she was pulled up short by the feel of Sandro's hands slipping around her waist, drawing her back against his chest.

"Don't think I won't make it up to you, Petra," Sandro whispered in her ear, sending electric shivers racing down her spine. "I have a few vacation days saved up, you know. What do you think about a weekend in Rome, just the two of us?"

Spinning about in his arms, Petra stared up at Sandro, eyes wide and staring in amazement. "Do… do you mean that?" she asked hesitantly, hardly daring to give the thought voice, lest it turn out to be a lie. But when Sandro smiled and nodded, she squealed in delight and wrapped her arms tightly around him. "Oh Sandro that sounds wonderful." She almost giggled with glee as she quickly untangled herself, giving him a quick peck on the cheek before turning away. She yelped suddenly and jumped as Sandro gave her playful swat on her rear end, one hand flying to massage the offended cheek. Sandro met her red-faced, accusing glare with a smirking, mischievous grin.

"I'll be waiting in the living room. Hurry up."

Rubbing her rear and grumbling to herself, Petra stomped over to the bed and sat down. Bending over, she grabbed her shoes and began buckling them on. Once finished, she strode gracefully out of the bedroom and over to where Sandro stood waiting at the front door. She glided across the hardwood floor, hips swaying seductively with each step. Sandro eyed her appreciatively, shaking his head and wetting his lips. "If you don't cut that out we're never going to get out of this apartment." Petra only laughed teasingly, sauntering past Sandro and out into the hallway. Behind her, Sandro shook his head, letting out a long, theatrical sigh. It was going to be a long night.


	10. Chapter 09: A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing

Chapter 09: A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing

"Are you ready?" Sandro asked for what had to have been the thousandth time in the past half-hour. He tightened his grip on the nondescript black leather briefcase he carried in one hand. His other arm he held out to Petra, which she took with a tightly suppressed growl.

Irritation flared, hot and sharp, within the tall, willowy girl. Willing her hands to stop fidgeting with the dark grey silk of her skirt, she glanced up at her handler, giving him a very strong, reproachful glare. She was nervous enough about what was coming, only moments away now. The fact that he was nervous as well, and revealing that fact to her, would only make her even more so. "I keep telling you I'm fine," she snapped in reply.

The bright, luminous crescent of the waxing moon hung low on the Eastern horizon as the pair strode through the large, open parking lot leading up to the Palace Merano hotel and health spa's front gate. Located in the heart of Merano, situated on an expansive property of carefully cultivated gardens and well-tended lawns, the massive structure was the very image of highest-tier indulgence.

"I can't believe he got a reservation here," Sandro was whispering, half to himself, under his breath. "I don't even want to think about how many strings he had to pull to pull it off."

"Why, what's wrong?" Petra asked quietly, picking up on his nervousness and anxiety. Instinctively her eyes began to sweep the parking lot and surrounding area for threats. The muscles in her legs and shoulders tightened reflexively in anticipation for the need to throw herself at Sandro in order to protect him from possible gunfire. Her hand itched with the desperate need to arm herself and it began to slowly creep toward the silvery-grey handbag that she carried.

Sandro gave a slow, subtle shake of his head, eyes continually roving, taking in every detail of their surroundings. "The Palace Merano is a world-renowned health spa and detox center Petra. This is the kind of place where A-list celebrities and superstar athletes come to get clean and relax. You can't just make a dinner reservation here. And certainly not on less than twenty-four hours' notice."

Petra shrugged dismissively, her voice light and flippant in her response. "Maybe Yurik is friends with someone high up in the staff,"

Sandro shook his head slowly in denial, his voice low and derisive as he explained. "Men like Yurik don't have friends; they have business associates. More likely his connection is with one of the guests; probably a politician. And with the amounts of money it costs to stay here, we're looking at cabinet ministers, not just some local representative. The kinds of people with the power and authority to make our lives a living Hell."

Petra nodded her understanding, whispering quietly, "I'll keep my eyes open for anyone who looks like they know Balašev. Then, when we get back to the Agency, I can work with Priscilla to go through a list of personnel to try to put some names to the faces."

"Good idea; I'll call the agency once I leave and have them start setting that up." His words, as well as the distinctive note of approval present in his voice, set off a small flush of pride that swept through Petra. He had trained her well and she knew how to use her head.

Before long Petra caught sight of Yurik, standing beside the driver's door of his dark-coloured Mercedes CLK500. He was dressed in a well-cut black tuxedo that emphasized his broad shoulders, complimented by a sage green vest and bowtie. The crisp whiteness of his shirt seemed almost to glow in the moonlight. She pointed the man out to Sandro, who nodded silently and immediately steered them towards him. Maintaining a smooth, stately glide as they made their way between the rows of parked cars, the flared hem of Petra's dress swirled and danced about her bare ankles at each graceful step. Petra could not help the faint flush of embarrassment that crept up into her cheeks at the feel of Yurik's eyes passing over her. The deeply plunging neckline and open back had her feeling horribly exposed and she was beginning to regret ever having bought the thing. But the way Sandro had looked at her…

"Stop that," Sandro hissed sharply, his voice carefully pitched to a level that only her heightened cyborg hearing could make out. She snatched her hand back down to her side at his admonishment, away from where she had been trying to tug the dress up higher over her chest. It was only her imagination; her boobs were _not_ about to pop free.

Spotting the pair approaching, Yurik waved them over. He favoured Sandro and Petra with a warm, friendly smile. "Good evening, Signor Sanguedolce; Signorina Conigliaro."

Sandro returned the man's greeting with a shallow nod. His voice was brusque and businesslike, his words clipped. "Signor Balašev. As agreed, I have the first half of your payment here." Sandro lifted the briefcase slightly, drawing attention to it for emphasis.

"Ah yes, of course. I hope you'll forgive me for saying so, but the money is the least of what I was looking forward to this night." Reaching out, he accepted the case from Sandro and slipped it into hidden, fortified compartment in the trunk of his car.

Standing around waiting, Petra peered around the parking lot making sure there wasn't anyone close enough to overhear. Sandro commented to Yurik idly, giving voice to something that he had expressed curiosity about during the drive over. "I must admit, Signor Balašev, I was rather surprised at your choice of payment methods. Isn't a suitcase full of cash a little, I don't know, cliché? A simple wire-transfer is so much faster."

"And easier to trace as well," Yurik replied, straightening and shutting the trunk's lid with a muffled _Thump_. "Because it is so popular nowadays, Government agencies like the _Guardia di Finanza_ have become very good at sniffing out these digital money-trails and tracking them back to their source. So I've taken to preferring a more," he paused in his oration to consider his words, one hand waving about lazily in the air in front of him, "Low-tech method. Governments, they have become too used to their modern toys. They spend so much time focused on searching the Internet and tracking bank transfers that they never notice what slips by right under their nose." Hearing Yurik talk, Petra suppressed a fierce, wolfish grin. She was certain that, before the night was out, Ferro would be passing this knowledge on to every analyst in every agency in the Italian government. It was almost a shame they were going to be taking Yurik into custody; it would have been entertaining to watch him realize that he had just dug his own grave.

"I see," Sandro said slowly. Glancing over, Petra felt her feelings of smug self-satisfaction evaporate somewhat. Sandro's face was creased slightly in an expression of deep reflection and careful consideration. There was also a not-so-insignificant amount of stunned incredulity as well. His reaction was catching Petra completely off guard. She didn't know what to make of it and that uncertainty had her growing mildly nervous and unsettled. Either there was something more to the exchange that she simply was not picking up on, or Sandro was more shocked by the revelation than he was letting on. "That…is actually very clever, Signor Balašev. I'm impressed." Yurik nodded benevolently in gracious acceptance the other man's praise of his keen wit and superior intelligence.

Shaking himself out of his reflective fugue, Sandro refocused his attention on the other man and resumed speaking. "I hope you don't think I'm rushing off, but I'm afraid I still have some small matters to take care of tonight. It seems that there's been some sort of mix-up down at Gioia Tauro. Something about customs fees and import taxes."

Yurik nodded in understanding, expressing words of commiseration. "I'm sorry to hear that. I hope you get things sorted out."

"As do I," Sandro replied sourly. "I have nearly fifteen million Euros worth of inventory tied up on those boats. I'm already taking a financial risk trying to build a market for Japanese cars here in Italy." It was the cover that he was using, that of the owner of an import company dealing mostly with vehicles and high-end electronics. He had also "let slip" to Yurik during their correspondences that he also dealt in various less-than-legal trade items on behalf of a shared business venture between the Camorra and Yakuza.

Sandro sighed then, reaching up to massage his temples between thumb and forefinger. "But this is my problem, not yours." Letting his hand fall, he paused a moment and then added with a sly, knowing smirk. "Besides, I'm sure you have your own…ahem…business, which you are undoubtedly eager to attend to."

Yurik burst out laughing at Sandro's good-natured quip. He made a suitably light-hearted, joking comment in reply and after a few more words of friendly banter had passed between the two men, Sandro relinquished Petra's arm. With a final handshake shared with Yurik, Sandro turned and walked away without a backwards glance. Petra had to force herself not to stare longingly after him.

"Well my dear, why don't we head inside? It is rather cool out here and I'm sure you're starting to get cold, wearing just that thin dress. Which, might I say, you look positively stunning in." Her stomach writhing with distaste, Petra graced Yurik with a pleased, preening smile in response. Her voice cool and edged with just the faintest trace of haughty arrogance, she thanked him for the flattering comment and agreed with his most sensible suggestion. Taking a delicate hold of his proffered arm, Petra followed at Yurik's side as they made their way towards the hotel.

The spacious grounds of the Palace Merano were encircled by a nine-foot wall of decorative brickwork. While the hotel did cater to casual visitors such as tourists and vacationers, as Sandro had intimated to Petra, it also boasted a client-base that included top-tier athletes, music icons, A-list celebrities and high ranking political figures. Such individuals, when they felt the need to partake in the Palace Merano's world-renowned health and wellness facilities, demanded a certain level of privacy and exclusivity. To help facilitate this, the massive arched entranceway was inset with an imposing gate of heavy black wrought-iron. The gates stood open at the moment, with a pair of doormen in uniforms of deep maroon wool greatcoats with gold buttons and trim around cuffs and collar, matching gloves and black dress pants standing to one side to welcome newly arriving guests, and to close and secure those gates come closing time.

Passing through the portal onto the grounds proper, Petra stepped onto a wide cobblestoned driveway that looped around a circular garden of pruned shrubs and Mediterranean palm trees. The garden was bisected by a cobblestoned walking path, lined with flowers that bloomed in a wild array of vibrant pinks, yellows and violets. Small copses of trees and carefully pruned shrubs screened most of the sprawling grounds from view.

Through the main doors the pair walked, into the grand entrance hall. Smooth and gleaming in the light of numerous wall sconces and hanging cut crystal chandeliers, four columns of gold-capped, cream-coloured marble held up the towering sixteen-foot ceiling. Large Turkish area rugs made numerous islands where reproduction antique armchairs and tables offered places for guests to sit and converse casually while waiting for their rooms to be made ready or to be checked out before departing. The wooden floorboards that showed between the rugs, and in the open spaces by the main doors and front desk, were waxed and polished to a mirrored finish. Potted plants sat within small, half-circle niches set high up on the walls. Directly across from the front entrance, three squared arches opened out into the main corridor that ran the length of the hotel's main building. The center arch offered a view all of the way to the back of the building, where gold-plated French doors led out to the back gardens. To their left, through another set of French doors, was a bright and airy lounge hall with high ceilings and elaborate French panelling. Intricate wrought-iron wall sconces, all gold-plated, filled the room with light that spilled out into the main reception hall. At this hour of the evening, there were only a small handful of people still up and about. Mostly staff members in crisp, clean hotel livery going about their duties. Every one bobbed quick nods and shallow bows to the pair as they passed, offering warm, friendly smiles and words of greeting.

The hem of Petra's dress swirled about her ankles, the heels of her shoes clicking loudly on the gleaming hardwood floor as they passed through the entrance hall and into the corridor beyond. The walls of the hotel's corridors were painted soft, neutral beige. Hanging cut-crystal lights and sconces filled the passages with a rich, warm illumination. Pairs of lounge chairs sat just outside each room, flanking end tables lacquered black and gold. Petra smiled and nodded to a maid trundling by with a cleaning cart, who nodded and smiled in turn without pausing. A young man and woman dressed in fluffy white bathrobes and slippers passed them at a crossing corridor. The woman's long black hair hung damp and limp down her back. The man, tall and lean, dipped his head politely to her and Yurik before moving on. The woman simply smiled and eyed both Petra and Yurik appreciatively. Petra's eyes popped slightly, her mouth falling open and heat beginning to suffuse her face. The woman spared a second glance for Petra and the smile she flashed was very…suggestive in its warmth. Shivering with discomfort and distaste, Petra peeled her gaze away from the woman and kept her eyes focused forward. Yurik seemed to know where he was going as they made their way through the hotel and Petra was content to follow along silently at his side.

In short order they were passing through a set of French doors into the restaurant. Small, round bistro tables and chairs, each draped with snowy-white cloths, filled much of the room's floor space. More fine Turkish rugs covered the floor, with only a narrow band of parquet wood flooring visible down the room's center. The large room was divided in half by a pair of tall columns of the same pale marble as was used in the entrance hall. The columns supported a recessed ceiling made up of six square sections. Intricate crystal chandeliers hung down from the center of each section, bathing the room below with light. The walls were coloured in a slightly darker shade of creamy yellow, with white-painted square-cut faux pillars spaced evenly along three of the four walls. The fourth wall consisted mainly of towering floor-to-ceiling windows that looked down upon the back gardens. Ornamental trees, pruned shrubs and carefully cultivated flower beds made for a gorgeous fairy-tale backdrop. Stone pathways meandered through the gardens, leaning to secluded seating areas where wrought-iron benches encircled small fountains, or else opened out onto lush, verdant lawns where tables and chairs sat ready for guests to come and enjoy a cup of tea in the sun and cool alpine breeze.

The restaurant's maître d', a small smiling woman with her honey-yellow hair, slightly greying at the temples, greeted the pair upon entering and, after exchanging pleasantries, showed them to their table. While the restaurant was hardly crowded, there were more tables filled than empty, which produced a slightly muted buzz of conversation that filled the air. Beneath the whispered words, the soft dulcet tones of a classical arrangement could be heard, providing mood and atmosphere to the dining experience.

Accepting the chair that Yurik pulled out for her, Petra sat down, adjusting and smoothing her skirts while he circled around to take his own seat. A very handsome young man appeared with a pair of menus, as well as a pitcher of ice water what he used to fill their glasses and a small basket of slim loaves of bread. The man's waiter uniform of black vest of white shirt, black pants and gleaming black shoes made him look very dashing and for a moment Petra felt herself flashing back to her text message conversation with Kara earlier in the day. The man might not be a prince or a wealthy tycoon, but he was certainly still pleasing to look at nonetheless.

The waiter left to give the pair a few moments to look over the menu and make their selections. Yurik chatted to her amiably during this time, while Petra fed him suitably innocuous responses to keep him pacified. She was using the leather-bound menu to shield her eyes from view, which allowed her to scan the crowd of patrons unnoticed. She catalogued a long list of faces that she would be sure to go over with Sandro, Ferro and Priscilla afterwards. She was only roughly halfway through her careful cataloguing when the waiter returned and the pair made their selections. For entrees, Petra ordered a simple goat cheese and baby spinach salad with diced radishes, mushrooms and red peppers, sparsely drizzled with a light vinaigrette sauce. Yurik had a plate of Beef Carpaccio, the thin slices of veal arranged like the petals of a flower. The uncooked meat gave off a faint aroma of its lemon juice and olive oil marinade. The fillets were topped with a dusting of parmesan cheese and sliced mushrooms and garnished with a sprinkling of basil leaves.

"So how do you know Signor Sanguedolce?" Yurik asked suddenly, speaking around a mouthful of veal. Petra glanced up from her plate sharply, her face painted with an expression of slightly bewildered surprise. Taking a slow sip from her glass of red wine to give herself a moment to think, Petra carefully considered the purpose of the question. Was Yurik simply curious about the relationship connection between "Armand and Renata", or was this some not-too-subtle method of pumping her for information, thinking her too stupid and ditzy to notice.

"Armand? Oh, I've known him for years. He's an old business associate of my father's." Petra shrugged dismissively, responding to his inquiry in a very light and casual manner. There were no hidden secrets or deception at play, nothing for him to be suspicious about and feel the need to ferret out the truth. It was all simple; normal.

Yurik, however, did not seem entirely satisfied with her answer, as he frowned slightly, creases forming at the corners of his eyes as he arched one thick brow quizzically. "And then, years later, you two just happen to get together? You must only have been a little girl when he and your father worked together. Isn't that a little…well, disturbing?"

"It wasn't _that_ long ago," Petra chuckled, shaking her head at what seemed to be his moral outrage at the impropriety of the situation. "I was fifteen when they worked together and besides, I wasn't some sheltered school-girl, Signore Balašev. It's not like Armand was the first man I've ever slept with."

"Well, I still think it's rather odd."

"What can I say?" Petra said teasingly, fixing Yurik with a very pointed, meaningful look. She leaned forward over the table, her face cupped in one hand, the other idly toying with the neckline of her dress. She could see Yurik slowly inching closer, trying to fight his eyes' instinctive desire to dart down to her chest. Her voice was low, almost conspiratorial in its tone, with just a tough of sultry huskiness. "I've always had a thing for older man. They're just so dashing and distinguished. They're old enough to know what they want out of life and how to go out and take it." She sat back in her seat abruptly, leaving Yurik blinking and slightly dazed. "Now then, if you're finished talking about me and Armand, I was under the impression that tonight was supposed to be about…us?"

Yurik barked a shaky, uneasy laugh as he sat back, readjusting himself in his seat. Petra could see sweat beading on his face and he reached up with his napkin to dab at forehead and cheeks. "Fair enough Signorina Conigliaro, I…"

"Oh please," Petra said, cutting him off abruptly in mid-sentence. "Enough of all this formality. You can call me by name, you know."

He stared over at her for several moments, before a warm, winning smile slowly spread across his face. It was a smile seemed to shave years off of his age, making him seem at once both younger and more handsome. "I believe I can manage that."

They lapsed into easy, light-hearted conversation then, each talking over their respective entrees. The waiter returned to refill their glasses of wine, then again to clear away the table in advance of the main course, which arrived some five minutes later. Yurik's choice of meal was a beautifully bronzed lobster thermidor, the two halves arrayed so that the natural curve of the shells resembled the ancient Zen symbol of yin and yang. For Petra's main course, she had picked a wine-poached salmon topped by a dry wine and truffle sauce, with scalloped potatoes and a creamy garlic penne on the side.

A considerable length of time passed where Petra was mostly lost in the tantalizing blend of flavours assailing her taste buds. Petra hated to cast aspersions against the dining hall staff, but none of the food that came out of their kitchens compared to what she was currently experiencing. The nights when Kara and Michele took over cooking duties came close, but she still had to give her favour to the Palace Merano's chefs.

"So there I am, nearly up to my waist in water, completely soaking wet. I have little lake weeds dangling off of my head and shoulders and Dmitri turns to me and says: 'why did you let go of the fish?'" Yurik burst out in hearty laughter after finishing his anecdote, his eyes sparkling with mirth. Despite her reservations and feelings towards the man, Petra found herself chuckling along with the arms dealer in genuine amusement.

"Your brother sounds like he was pretty wild when you were growing up," Petra giggled, pausing to take a small, careful sip of her red wine.

Yurik nodded slowly in agreement, a small smile spreading across his slightly weathered face at the pleasant memories stirred up within his mind. "He certainly had his moments. Ironic then, that Dmitri is now the one with a wife and children and I spend most of my evenings enjoying the night life."

"Oh, I don't know," Petra replied coyly. "I'd say that you were just…making up for lost time."

"I suppose I am," Yurik laughed, draining his glass in one smooth gulp. "I suppose I am."

Petra sat delicately picking at the remains of her meal while Yurik continued to recount more humorous reminiscences of growing up in what was then rural Southern Yugoslavia. While poor, his family had been relatively happy under the old communist regime, living in one of the many state-owned tenement blocks built after the Second World War in order to encourage rural development and expansion.

Yurik and his younger brother Dmitri had both been in their early teens when the Soviet Union fell and began to break apart as separatist revolutions ran rampant throughout Eastern Europe. Tired of the political and ethnic pressures that continued to mount throughout the nineties, Dmitri had already left with his family to resettle in Italy when the Kosovo war erupted.

As he talked, Petra found herself suffering from a rather uncomfortable sense of conflict. In defiance of her best efforts to remain focused solely on the mission, she couldn't shake free of the notion that Yurik was proving to be surprisingly…well, nice. He was charming and funny and despite being in his mid forties and bearing his fair share of fine lines, he was still a rather handsome man. Had circumstances been different–had Yurik not been who and what he was–Petra honestly thought that she could have liked the man.

Using his fork, a large, succulent shrimp sautéed in butter and cognac and smothered in a creamy lemon beurre blanc speared on the end, he indicated toward her plate, asking, "How do you like the salmon?"

"It's delicious," Petra exclaimed emphatically, blushing slightly at her own fervent enthusiasm.

Yurik chuckled at her immediate and eager response. "Well I'm sure Francois would be happy to hear that you approve."

"Who?"

"Francois Lejardin," Yurik answered. "He is the head chef here at Le Table du Palace."

"You know the head chef?" Petra goggled, stunned and more than slightly impressed. Sandro had been right in his suspicions: Yurik was indeed well connected. If not quite in the way that he had feared.

"I've known Francois for years," Yurik replied offhandedly, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to have the head chef of a world-renowned health spa as a friend. "He can be a bit of a pretentious ass at times, but he is a good man."

Petra smiled thinly as Yurik jerked slightly at the heavily-accented voice, razor-sharp in its cutting sarcasm, which sounded suddenly from behind him. "You cannot _possibly_ believe just how glad I am that I meet with your approval Yurik; I bask in the radiance that your praise brings down upon me." She had spotted the tall, heavy-set man in a pristine white chef's coat, the fabric strained across a rather large, bulging stomach, approaching from the direction of the kitchen. Hard, critical eyes of a pale, steely grey stared out of a wide, pudgy face set in what seemed to her to be a permanent glower.

Seeing who it was behind him, Yurik beamed a broad, friendly smile at the other man, rising out of his seat to clasp hands in a hearty shake. "Francoise, there you are! How are you my friend?"

"I'm getting by," Francois replied dryly. He turned his attention towards Petra, his critical gaze sweeping over her appraisingly. His face softened slightly, to the point where his tightly pursed lips actually curled up into the semblance of an ever-so-slight smile. "You certainly appear to be doing well for yourself, it seems."

"Business has been good and I manage to keep myself entertained," Yurik laughed. "But I forget my manners. Allow me to make introductions. This lovely example of female perfection is Signorina Renata Conigliaro. Renata, this pompous bag of overbearing French arrogance is Signor Francois Lejardin, head chef here at the Palace Merano."

"It is a pleasure to meet you Signore," Petra said politely, offering the man a respectful bow of her head. "Where in France are you from; if I may ask?"

Acknowledging Petra's bow with one of his own, Francois answered her in a voice that carried a rather heavy acerbic bite of heated indignation that he made some effort to modulate. "I am not. I'm from Corsica, my dear; born and raised. I did, however, get my Masters of Gastronomy at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. I also spent time in both Belgium and Florence studying both German and Tuscan cooking traditions, respectively. And while we are on the topic of food, I trust you are enjoying your meal so far?"

"Oh yes, absolutely," Petra replied emphatically. "It's delicious; thank you."

"Not at all, my dear; it is my pleasure." Despite his earlier sardonic comments to Yurik, the Frenchman did indeed seem to bask in her simple praise of the meal. "If I may ask though, how on Earth did a lovely, refined young woman such as yourself become involved with this coarse, degenerate swine?"

Petra chuckled delicately, taking a tiny sip from her wine to give herself a moment to delay in answering. She was blushing slightly from the man's unabashed flattery. "We met through, um…business. My…father is a client of his." She wisely decided that it might not be the best of ideas to let Francois know that Yurik had essentially "bought" her company and services from the man he thought was her boyfriend.

"I see," Francois replied shortly, frowning in clear disapproval. "Well if I might offer a suggestion? Watch yourself around this man. He may seem all friendly and charming on the outside. But on the inside, he is a pig; a lecher and a scoundrel. You are too good for the likes of him." Petra again chuckled delicately, now growing slightly uncomfortable with the man's seemingly unending praise for her and his critical disdain for Yurik.

"Hear now," Yurik decried, putting on a show of being highly insulted by Francois' demeanour towards him. "There is simply no call for this blatant and most unfair character assassination. I have been a perfect gentleman."

Francois sniffed disdainfully, swinging his gaze from Petra back to Yurik. "So you say, Yurik, so you say. But me, I say that no matter how well the wolf acts at being the sheep, it never stops being the wolf, non?"

Petra decided to break in before things could degenerate into outright shouting. Yurik didn't look as if he was overly upset by the other man's comments, but who could tell when one might set the other off? "Why thank you, Signore Lejardin. I appreciate your concern for my safety and I'll be sure to stay on my toes around him; I promise."

Both men shifted their attention back to her, caught off guard by her sudden pronouncement. After a while though, Francois offered her a subtle smile and shallow nod of his head. "That is all I ask, Mademoiselle. With that then, I shall leave you to enjoy the rest of your meal. Adieu and bon appétit."

Petra waited until Francois had returned to the kitchen, following the man with her eyes while sipping at her wine before speaking up. "Well he seemed awfully nice. Didn't seem to think very highly of you though."

Laughing good-naturedly, Yurik scoffed, waving away her concerns. "Francois has always been like that. I told you: he's a pretentious ass, remember? I think that's why I like him, to be honest."

The rest of the meal was spent in idle, friendly conversation. Yurik spent most of the time asking Petra about herself; her likes and dislikes, hobbies and experiences. She replied happily, inwardly thanking Sandro's thoroughness in putting together her back story. Petra had spent almost two weeks prior to their going undercover studying it and knew every detail by heart. "I plan to get my fashion degree in Milan. I did some modelling work when I was younger, but I think I would prefer to make the clothes, rather than simply wear them."

"A very wise decision, to be perfectly honest," Yurik replied lightly with an approving nod. "Modelling is, after all, a rather notoriously competitive and cut-throat business; and one not well known for its long-term job security. Do you plan to go work for one of the major labels, or were you hoping to start your own line?"

"Armand thinks I should go to work for one of the big fashion firms; at least to start out with."

Yurik pursed his lips in a considerate frown, nodding slowly in silent agreement. "That _is_ good advice. It will give you practical experience working in the fashion industry and allow you to make a name for yourself."

"I suppose," Petra said with a simple and rather indifferent shrug of her shoulders.

The rest of the meal progressed in a similar vein, with both Petra and Yurik conversing and getting to know one another. Numerous times Petra found herself overcome by giggles at some particularly humorous recounting of Yurik's. The longer the night wore on, the deeper her sense of conflict grew. There was just no escaping the fact that Petra was truly and thoroughly enjoying herself. She almost regretted the fact that she would have to arrest him and bring him in for interrogation. But then, of course, this was just another part of the job that she was made to do. Had Sandro been there, he would have told her that this was another lesson to be learned about the espionage game: you can't always guarantee that the target you're sent in to secure or eliminate is some sleazy scumbag or violent, cold-hearted evil-doer; someone easy to hate and that you could feel a ready eagerness to hunt down. Sometimes, the target was just a nice, decent person. Someone with a family and friends; someone with a regular nine-to-five job who took their kids to soccer on the weekends and helped out in the local community. Sometimes the target was a person who, had circumstances been different, could have been a friend.

"I trust that everything was up to your expectations?" the handsome, fresh-faced young waiter asked courteously after Petra and Yurik had done away with their individual desserts. Petra was just spooning the last of her _profiteroles au chocolat_ into her mouth.

"Absolutely fantastic, thank you," Yurik said, handing back the slim leather folder displaying their bill, along with his credit card and a fifty-Euro note as a tip. "Please deliver my heart-felt compliments to Francois and his staff." The young man nodded in thanks and appreciation, expertly and smoothly slipping the bank note into his vest pocket as he accepted the leather folder from Yurik and walked away.

"So, where are we off to next?" Petra asked coyly while rising to her feet. Unconsciously she adjusted her skirts, smoothing the material over her hips and thighs.

"I have a couple of places in mind," Yurik answered, flashing her a slightly mischievous grin. "First off, I thought we might take some time to relax and allow our meals to settle and digest."

"What exactly did you have in mind?"

Rather than answer right off, Yurik only smiled, holding his arm out for her to grasp. He chuckled lightly, teasingly, as he led her out of the restaurant and deeper into the hotel complex. "You will see."

It took Sandro over an hour to make his way from the Palace Merano back to the observation van that had been stationed in an alleyway that ran between a bakery and an old, crumbling tenement block. The narrow passage, just barely wide enough for the van, was completely enshrouded in darkness. The vehicle's navy-blue paint job made it all-but invisible in the gloom. Earlier in the evening, Lucretia had scaled up the side of the apartment building lugging a coil of copper wire and a metal pole in order to erect a signal antenna on the roof. There was no telling where Yurik planned to take Petra during the course of their "date" and neither Jean nor Enzo wanted to risk them moving beyond range of their communication equipment. Lucretia had suggested that they just use the cellphone network to carry the signals, but Enzo had squashed the idea, reminding her of how easy it was to trace a transmission by tracking cell tower usage.

After leaving the hotel, Sandro spent some time just driving around town, taking random turns in case he was being followed. He knew that it was highly unlikely that anyone would be tailing him, but while working as an intelligence agent, being overly cautious was a valued trait. And now, if anything, working with Section Two and made those traits even more of a necessity.

Sandro eventually pulled into the parking lot of the historic Trauttmansdorff Castle. Built in the sixteenth century upon a low hill on the southern edge of town, the castle overlooked the whole of Merano. Trauttmansdorff was currently the host of Merano's history of tourism museum and since 2001 the castle's grounds had been the site of Merano's largest public botanical garden.

Stepping out of the car, Sandro strode calmly into the gardens, making his way through the carefully tended shrubs and flowers. This early in the season, the botanical gardens were not officially open during the night, but there was little enforcement of the policy and Sandro glimpsed the occasional couple walking arm-in-arm. He made his way down to a relatively secluded part of the garden, where a small gazebo sat overlooking a man-made pond. Walking over to the gazebo, he quickly knelt down and pried free a loose section of the wooden lattice that encircled the structure's base. Reaching under, he fished around blindly until he found the school bag that he had had one of Ferro's people plant there for him ahead of time.

Giving a careful, critical look around to ensure that he was alone, Sandro began stripping out of his tailored suit while pulling out another set of clothes from the bag. He quickly donned faded, slightly baggy jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. Slipping into a pair of well-worn running shoes and pulling a black wind-breaker over the hoodie, he settled a dark red baseball cap onto his head to complete the ensemble. Packing away his suit, Sandro slung the bag over his shoulders and made his way back up to the road, coming out on the opposite side of the gardens from where he had parked. Another one of Ferro's support staff would come by in the morning to pick up the vehicle.

Walking through Merano, habit forced Sandro to again meander around aimlessly in order to throw off any pursuers. When he finally slipped into the alleyway where the surveillance van was parked, Sandro was sweating beneath his clothes and panting slightly. While he had never been a particularly athletic man to begin with, he was still more than a little disappointed in himself. Either he was starting to get old, which Sandro flatly refused to believe, or he was letting himself become spoiled by having a super-human cyborg partner to do all of his running around and heavy lifting for him.

Tapping out a simple code against the van's rear doors to alert the team inside of his presence, Sandro hopped up inside.

Flicking a quick, appraising look about the van's interior, he found Enzo sitting alone at the banks of monitoring equipment running along the left side of the van, a set of insulated headphones clamped over his ears. One of Ferro's people, Nihad, was manning the opposite side. The large, heavy-set black man looked almost comically oversized in the cramped, confined interior of the surveillance van. Both men turned at Sandro's entrance, Nihad bobbing a curt, silent nod before returning to his equipment, while Enzo waved him over to the empty seat next to him, which Sandro accepted gratefully. "Alfonso off duty?" he asked curiously.

Enzo replied in a voice pitched to a low murmur, turning back to the surveillance equipment. "Yeah; he had the night shift yesterday, so I sent him back to the apartment to get some sleep."

"Fair enough," Sandro replied, keeping his own voice pitched low. "I did expect Jean to be here though."

Enzo cast Sandro a puzzled glance, eying him slightly askance. "Jean left hours ago; did no one contact you to let you know?"

Sandro felt himself goggling at the other man, his mouth falling open before he could catch himself and reassert his calm composure. "What do mean he left?"

"He got a call a couple of hours after you left," Nihad answered quietly. The big man leaned casually on one elbow, twisting around to regard the other two. "And whoever it was, it must have been important because as soon as he hung up the phone, he gathered up his things and grabbed the first flight back to Rome."

Sandro shook his head in disbelieving wonder. He muttered half to himself, more simply musing aloud than making an actual statement. "That doesn't make any sense. It's not like Jean to just walk out in the middle of a mission."

Enzo nodded his agreement slowly. "No, it doesn't. But, like Nihad said: it must have been important. He wouldn't have left otherwise."

"I suppose." Sandro sucked in a deep, steadying breath, letting it out in one long, slow sigh. Leaning back, he pressed one hand to his head, kneading and massaging his temples. "So where's Lucretia then? I can't imagine you sent _her_ back with Jean."

"No, of course not," Enzo chuckled in amused reply. "She's up in the front seat, taking a nap."

"You're letting her sleep in the middle of an active operation?" Sandro replied incredulously. His face was painted with a mixture of shocked disbelief and indignant outrage. That was _his_ partner out there with a dangerous arms dealer, putting her safety on the line. She was counting on everyone doing their jobs to support her from the shadows, ready to jump in and help her if she needed it and here Enzo was, letting his cyborg take a nap?

Enzo's head snapped around at Sandro's critical tone and he shot the other man a hot glare. With effort, he bit back the sharp, stinging retort that sprang to mind. Sandro had gall, questioning the way Enzo treated his cyborg. "Lucy was up almost all night yesterday working on that wireless transceiver she gave Petra," he shot back crossly. "It's not as if it takes the both of us to listen to Petra and Balašev flirt with each other, after all. But don't worry, when the time comes and Petra's making ready to take Balašev down, Lucy will be up and ready to do her part. Does that satisfy you?"

Feeling rather uncomfortable, Sandro knew that he had overstepped himself. He glanced away sheepishly from Enzo's intent stare, eventually grumbling out a weak apology. "You're right, I'm sorry." His voice strengthened that and, clearing his throat, turned back towards Enzo and continued. "It's just the nerves talking, I guess. This is the first time I've really let Petra be on her own during a mission, without being there to help and advise her along the way."

Enzo sniffed lightly, giving a sharp nod to signal his acceptance of the other man's apology. His face remained fixed in a faint scowl, however. He knew how much the other man cared for Petra, so Enzo couldn't fault Sandro's feeling nervous about her wellbeing, but still didn't give the man the right to criticize he and Lucretia's partnership dynamic. Although, had their positions been reversed, Enzo knew that he himself would likely be a basket case of nervous anxiety. "Fair enough, I guess," he muttered as way of offering his own apology for having snapped.

For a time then, the awkward tension blanketing the van held both men to their respective, uneasy silences. Enzo went back to listening to the conversation flowing back and forth between Petra and Yurik, while Sandro occupied himself with pouring himself a cup of coffee from the portable percolator that had been set up on the other side of the van and then sitting back to slowly sip at it. Eventually though, Sandro ventured forth to breach the thickening veil, asking simply, "So how are things going over there?"

"So far so good," Enzo answered, pausing to take a moment to listen to the faint, crackly voices. "They're still mostly just getting to know each other right now. Talking about their hobbies, favourite things, likes and dislikes; you know: normal first date conversation. Oh yeah, and it turns out that Balašev is friends with the head chef." Sandro nodded in understanding, lowering his gaze to stare into the depths of his coffee cup. That news did little to settle his nerves. On the one hand, he was relieved to hear that things were still, for the most part, relaxed and innocent. On the other hand, it only heightened his awareness of the fact that it would not stay that way for much longer.

"I'm still a little amazed that you thought to do this," Enzo said suddenly, causing Sandro twitch slightly, glancing up sharply to stare over at the other man. "You must be psychic or something. What the Hell made you think to plant a wireless microphone in the beadwork of Petra's dress?"

Sandro's sudden surge of anxiety and apprehension drained out of him, and he grinned, feeling it being replaced with a small sense of smug self-satisfaction. "It's called 'Professional Paranoia'. I don't like taking chances with any operation I'm doing and I knew there was a chance that we might not be able to slip a back-up _fratello_ to keep an eye on Yurik and Petra."

The slightly shorter, stockier man shook his head wonderingly, taking a gulp from his own cup of coffee. "Well it certainly paid off. The Palace Merano has an eight month waiting list for dinner reservations. Not even Michele's connections would have gotten him and Kara a table."

"She must have been pretty disappointed by that," Sandro mused amusedly, hiding his grin behind the rim of his cup.

Enzo groaned, scrubbing a hand back, through his hair in a show of exasperated frustration. "Oh God, you have no idea. She held it in fairly well; it's not like she threw a temper tantrum or anything, but you could definitely see it in her eyes. And she made _that_ face. You know the face…"

"Yeah, I know the face," Sandro interrupted, rolling his eyes and chuckling. "I swear to God, I think Kara holds seminars to teach new cyborgs how to make faces like that."

Enzo burst out laughing at that, throwing his head back and slapping at his thigh. "'How to Handle Your Handler in Five Easy Steps'. Yeah, that certainly sounds like our Kara."

"Excuse me, but I can hear you, you know."

Both men stopped and stared at the unexpectedly sudden sound of Lucretia's voice, sharp with resentment and consternation. Twisting around to look up at the front of the van, they saw the slim raven-haired girl peeking around the edge of the passenger-side seat, an expression of stern disapproval twisting her features.

"This is a private conversation," Enzo snapped with mock-severity, echoing the same rebuke Petra had used earlier in the day when Sandro and Yurik had interrupted her text message conversation with Kara. "Stop eavesdropping and go back to sleep." Lucy's face twisted into a petulant, pouting scowl, but after a brief moment where she continued to shoot icy disdain at Enzo, she withdrew back, out of sight.

Just as the two men were about to resume talking, Lucy again floated out to them from behind the passenger's seat. "Oh and just so you know: Kara does _not_ hold seminars. She doesn't have to; we're girls and we're born knowing how to manipulate you men."

Glancing over his shoulder, Enzo called back casually, "You know I heard that Jean sometimes spanks Rico when she's been misbehaving. Maybe I should try that sometime." Enzo's gaze was fixed on Sandro as he said this, flashing a broad, mischievous grin. For his part, Sandro could only shake his head and sigh. While he did indeed love Petra, and greatly valued their close relationship, there were times he found himself slightly envious of the easy rapport that Enzo shared with Lucretia. Even after nearly three years together, Petra still occasionally slipped back into her instinctive role as his cyborg; a tool of the Agency. Logically, Sandro knew that the differences in the two girls' behaviours were due in large part to the advancements made to the Conditioning process. Petra was, after all, the prototype for the Second Generation of cyborgs. By the time Lucretia had been taken in and converted, some two years later, the technology, predominantly the Conditioning medication, had been noticeably improved upon. But still those feelings lingered.

Enzo suddenly snapped forward, hunching over the monitoring equipment and pressing the headphones tight against his ears. "Hold on, we've got movement." Sandro felt his heart-rate surge instantly upwards. He could both hear and feel his pulse thundering in his ears. Keeping his silence, so as not to disturb Enzo's concentration, Sandro waited impatiently. He fidgeted nervously in his seat, hands rolling his now empty coffee cup back and forth between them. He watched intently as the other man frowned slightly in deep concentration. "They've finished their meal and they're getting ready to leave the restaurant."

"And? Where are they planning to go next?" Sandro demanded anxiously. He fought to steady his nerves, one leg beginning to twitch and spasm reflexively.

"I'm not sure," the man admitted finally, growling with frustration.

Pent up anxiety and the unnerving sense of helplessness made Sandro snap out harshly in autonomic "You're not sure? Why not; can't you hear them? Is the microphone not working or something?"

"Would you calm down?" Enzo barked irritably. "I can hear them just fine. The problem is that Balašev isn't saying where they're going. Apparently he has some kind of surprise lined up for Petra." All three men sat, silent, pondering what kind of surprise the arms dealer could have in mind for the next phase of his date. Sandro's seat squeaked and groaned as he shifted about nervously. Arms folded across his chest, foot tapping rhythmically on the van's bare, sheet metal floor, Sandro wracked his brain trying to think of what Yurik could have in mind. He _hated_ not knowing what was going on. Enzo was hunched over his computer console, both hands pressed tight to his ears. Small beads of sweat were rolling down his face from the intensity of his concentration. Glancing over, Sandro noticed that, despite his seeming focus on his own tasks, Nihad was casting occasional glimpses at Enzo's back, belying his own concern for what was going on with Petra.

"Maybe he rented a suite and he's taking her upstairs?"

All movement within the van halted at Lucretia's teasing comment. Not so much as a single breath stirred the air to break the heavy, oppressive silence that descended. Sandro shot a nervous, slightly panicky look in Enzo's direction, the other man's mouth writhing as he struggled to contain something that was building up within him. All at once, the dam burst, and Enzo roared out fiercely, "Damn it Lucy, I thought I told you to go back to sleep?" The passenger's seat trembled faintly as Lucretia jerked, clearly shocked by the vehemence in her handler's voice. She slowly peeked around the corner of the seat, hesitantly meeting Enzo's angry glare.

"It…it was just a joke Enzo; relax."

"Well I've had enough of you're damned jokes Lucy!" the man snapped, stabbing one accusatory finger towards the shocked girl. "This isn't a fucking game. We're here to do an important job; not screw around laughing and having fun. So I don't want to hear another word out of you unless it's mission related, is that understood?"

For the longest time, Lucretia could only stare wordlessly at Enzo, her mouth working soundlessly, but unable to work up a reply. Then, she managed to squeeze out a weak, "Yes sir," and once again vanish around the side of the chair. At any other time, the look of hurt and anguish that shone in her soft blue eyes would have stirred feelings of compassion and sympathy within Sandro. But he was too absorbed by his concern for Petra to feel much of either.

The harshness in the man's tone could have been attributed to his being genuinely fed up with Lucretia's rather infamously smart-assed attitude, but it far more likely stemmed from the sudden surge of panic that all three men undoubtedly shared. If Yurik was leading Petra back to some pre-arranged love-nest, then there would be no way to reach her if things went sour. Also, they _needed_ the documents stored on the man's computer. If Petra was unable to successfully secure the computer at the same time as she took down Yurik, then chances were that the data would be lost when the protective virus went active. The mission would end up as an almost complete failure.

A gently prodding word from Nihad sent everyone back on track, and with a mildly abashed look of his own, Enzo refocused his attention on the sounds coming through the headphones. And then, after an interminably long wait, Enzo perked up, his eyes sliding shut in order to help block out his surroundings. "Hold on, I think they've arrived. It sounds like they are still at the hotel and," Enzo paused, visibly straining to hear. "I think I can hear trickling water; like in a fountain. Wait a minute." Sandro held his breath, not daring to breath. "What the hell?"


	11. Chapter 10: Sense of Betrayal

Chapter 10: Sense of Betrayal

Petra stood rooted to the ground, eyes gazing about wonderingly. Spread out before her, past the glass double doors, was a long, artfully decorated lobby. The walls were painted in a soft, neutral beige colour, with pieces of modern art hung about the room. Accent lights were set over each painting, bathing the canvases in their own separate glow. The polished hardwood floor was dotted with pairs of lounge chairs arranged around small tables. There was a strong, almost overwhelming scent of some flowery perfume filling the air. The source of some of that scent undoubtedly came from the left side of the room, where a shallow alcove hosted some kind of odd plant arrangement, the likes of which Petra had never seen before. Layers of leafy plants, flowers and vines worked their way up the wall, halfway to the ceiling. There was a steady trickle of water from a small fountain that tumbled its way down to the floor. The light burbling of falling water made an airy, almost whimsical music designed to sooth frazzled nerves and impart a sense of peaceful tranquility.

Panning her head around to the other side of the room, Petra found another pair of glass doors almost directly across from her, tinted gold and etched with a pattern of bamboo and overlaid by the internationally recognizable 'Vitruvian Man' by Leonardo Da Vinci. At the far right-hand end of the room, there was a plain, utilitarian reception counter of white-washed wood and black granite top. Behind and slightly above the counter were several rows of shelves, loaded down with a wide selection of creams, lotions, shampoos and other assorted beauty products. A bright-eyed, smiling young woman stood behind the counter, watching Petra and Yurik enter the room. Her glossy black hair was pulled back into a tight bun set on the back of her head and she was dressed in a stark white coat, like the kinds worn by doctors. She visibly perked up at the sight of them, smile broadening even wider. "Buonasera Signore Balašev. Might I assume you're here for your nine o'clock appointment?"

Striding confidently up to the counter, Petra dragged along at his side, Yurik intoned strongly in an equally bright and cheerful voice that echoed in the small room in spite of all the acoustically absorptive materials. "Buonasera Maria and yes, indeed I am. I trust everything is ready for me and my lovely companion?

"One moment sir, while I check to make sure." The young woman Maria lowered her gaze to a computer screen hidden behind the counter, the sound of clicking and typing audible to Petra's ears. "Ah yes, here it is Signore Balašev. I have you down for a massage, facial and manicure-pedicure treatment for both you and your friend. If you would please wait one moment, I'll just check to make sure everything is ready for the two of you. Please feel free to relax here in the lobby in the mean-time."

Yurik bobbed a quick nod of assent and appreciation. With a bounce in his step, he led Petra over to one set of chairs near the wall of plants. Petra was feeling a growing sense of nervousness. She was not a complete stranger to the spa experience, Sandro having treated her a few times. What had her on edge though, was the thought of having to be naked, leaving her dress, and the hidden microphone, behind in the change room. There was also the possibility of the dye used to tan her skin and lend her the appearance of a full-blooded Italian woman would streak and run, revealing her deception and alerting Yurik that something was wrong.

"So this is the surprise you had in mind," Petra said while easing herself down into one of the chairs. Despite the anxiety she was feeling, she managed to keep any of it from showing in her voice. She shot Yurik a sly, coquettish look. She wanted him focused solely on the prize he believed awaited him at the end of the night, rather than risk him noticing just how nervous she had become.

Her ploy seemed to be working, as Yurik beamed broadly over at her, his eyes twinkling with clear delight. "Indeed it is. What do you think of it? A nice, full body massage followed by a reinvigorating facial sounds like a wonderful way to relax after a meal, don't you."

"Do you hear me complaining?" Petra teased. She reached up to idly twirl one dangling raven lock around her finger, staring enticingly into Yurik's eyes. "I'm just a little curious now about what _else_ you might have planned for tonight. I mean: a five-course meal at a gourmet restaurant, followed by a spa treatment; it's going to be hard to improve upon what you've already done."

"Oh ye of little faith, Signorina," Yurik laughed, patting her arm in a soothing, placating gesture. "I aim to please and I intend for this night to be one you will carry fondly in your memories for a very long time."

"Well you certainly have me interested," Petra cooed softly. Reaching out, she laid a hand gently, teasingly, against Yurik's wrist. She both saw and felt him twitch at the touch, his pulse racing wildly beneath her fingertips. A faint flush entered his face as sweat began to bead along his face and neck. Through Petra's enhanced senses, she could tell that his heart and respiration rate were beginning to soar. Her touch, her look, the sultry tone of her voice, they all wove together to send Yurik spiralling into heady heights of anticipation and arousal. A part of Petra was disgusted with how the man was reacting, as if she had promised him the world and more with but those three simple elements. Another part of her, however, goggled in amazed wonder that something so small, something so seemingly insignificant, could elicit such a profound reaction. It was a part of what Sandro had trained her for, the ability to enchant and seduce a man into exposing his deepest and most fatal flaws and weaknesses. After nearly three years of working together, she was very good at it. However, that small part of her never stopped being amazed at what she could do with but a touch, a look and a few words.

Only a short time later, the receptionist called out, informing them that everything was indeed ready and that they could head into the spa proper. She gave them quick, simple instructions on how to navigate their way through the spa; though Petra gathered from Yurik's distinct lack of reaction and rather bored, disinterested expression that the directions were more for her benefit than his.

The change room, when Petra had made her way to it, was simply yet elegantly furnished; utilitarian in its design and arrangement but still carrying that same level of refined elegance that Petra had come to expect from the hotel. The soft pastel tones and gentle lighting conveyed a sense of tranquility and peacefulness, even here. Long, bamboo benches ran between rows of lockers painted powder blue. The sound of running water filtered out from where Petra assumed the showers must be. Glancing about, she noticed faint, trailing wisps of steam curling and licking at the ceiling. _The sauna must be over there too,_ Petra thought to herself. The air was heavy and oppressive with humidity and sweat immediately popped out of every pour and started running down her face, back and arms.

Snatches of conversations reached Petra's ears, alerting her to the fact that she wasn't alone in the room. She could hear the soft, pattering sounds of feminine footfalls and could make out the words of idle chatter and the tinkling, musical chimes of giggling laughter. The sounds all echoed off of the walls, making it virtually impossible for her to place the source of each noise. Unable to pinpoint the location of her fellow changers, and unwilling to be caught standing just inside the threshold, like some shy, fearful child undergoing her very first experience of a public changing room, Petra strode quickly and purposefully over to one locker. Sitting down, she unbuckled the straps of her high-heels and slipped them off. The warm, damp air hit the soles of her feet and she gave a small, contented sigh. It wasn't that her feet hurt; with her artificial limbs, Petra wasn't really able to feel any significant amount of pain, but the shoes _were_ uncomfortable and discomfort was a sensation she was capable of feeling in abundance.

Flicking a quick, searching glance in either direction, Petra reached between her breasts, fondling the hidden microphone. She tugged it up, as close to her mouth as possible so that she wouldn't have to speak too loudly to be heard. "Petra to surveillance team, be advised that I am about to go out of contact. I repeat: I will be going completely dark. Unable to confirm when I'll be able to re-establish communications." With those words, a swarm of sparrow-sized butterflies erupted within her stomach. That sense of nervousness, always lurking in the background, returned with a vengeance, clamping down tightly on her mind. She had to fight to swallow the sudden lump in her throat.

Reaching behind her head, Petra unclipped the clasp on the neck strap. As she let go, the dress slowly slipped down her body, the silk sliding across her skin. It felt like the tenderest of caresses; almost sensual in the way the material glided across every curve and sent tiny shivers of pleasure rippling through her.

Stepping out of the dress, which was now pooled on the floor at her feet, Petra hung it up in the locker and began undoing her hair. The raven-coloured locks cascaded down, tumbling to just below her shoulder blades. Slipping out of her underwear, Petra pulled a large, fluffy white towel from the locker's top shelf and wrapped it tightly about herself. The light pink bathrobe went on over that and with a final sigh, she set her purse into the locker, closed the door and put the key into the pocket of the robe. She was now completely and totally on her own. She felt horribly exposed and not just about her state of undress. Her sidearm was in her purse, now locked away, beyond reach.

_For God's sake Petra, get a hold of yourself,_ she mentally berated herself harshly. _You're a state-of-the-art, multi-million Euros combat cyborg. You are perfectly capable of taking care of yourself without a gun._ With that thought steeling her resolve, Petra turned smartly on her heel and padded out of the room. With renewed conviction, she made her way deeper into the spa facility, following the receptionist's directions. Through a door and around a broad, tall privacy screen, she entered into a large, brightly-lit room. A silvery name plate mounted beside the door named the room as the "Group Relaxation Center". There were the sounds of soft, lilting music drifting on the warm, slightly steamy air and the strong scent of fragrant oils tickled at Petra's nose. A row of manicure chairs occupied one wall of the room, with several sets of chairs and tables placed nearby in a kind of small lounge. There was even a gas-fed fireplace tucked into the corner to further add to the relaxing ambiance.

Petra turned at the sound of a woman's voice calling out to her and found one of the spa's therapists slowly approaching. The young woman looked to be no more than twenty years old, her plumply-pretty face set in a beaming smile. Corn-yellow hair was swept back into a long pony-tail placed high on the back of her head so that it bobbed and waved with every small move she made. She was dressed all in white, the shirt and pants closely resembling hospital scrubs. Petra suspected that the receptionist and therapist were both dressed identically, so the garments were obviously what passed for a kind of uniform here in the spa. "Buonasera Signorina," the woman said in cheerful greeting, coming to a stop a few feet away. "My name is Trisha and I will be your relaxation therapist for this evening. If you would like, I can take you over to the salon and begin your facial treatment."

"Actually," Petra cut in, forcing out as much casual arrogance as possible, "I think I'd prefer to skip the facial. I just got one done a few days ago, so I shouldn't need another one so soon."

Trisha blinked in mild surprise, having pulled up short at Petra's unexpected comment. She slowly nodded in understanding and assent. "Oh, I see. Yes, that would be a good idea then. Excessive facial treatments can actually end up damaging your skin, so thank you for mentioning that." Trisha paused then to consider for a brief moment, one long slim finger pressed to her full, pouty lips, before continuing on. "In that case then, I suppose we could skip right to the massage, if that's all right with you?"

"Why yes, a massage sounds simply wonderful," Petra replied, putting on a bright, eager smile. Trisha returned the grin, bobbing her head in a quick, shallow bow.

Turning smartly on her heel, she led Petra to another area of the relaxation center. Up, onto a large, screened-in porch area, the floor-to-ceiling windows that made up the entire back wall looking out on the hotel's spacious back lawns. Several massage tables sat in the middle of the porch area, all of them currently empty. The porch was flanked on either side by trios of doors that led into private massage parlours and it was through one such door that Trisha led Petra.

The small, rectangular room was dominated by the large, lushly padded massage table. A coat rack stood in one corner of the room, next to the door that Petra used to hand up her robe. Two of the room's walls were line by a series of shelves, drawers and glass-fronted cabinets. Most of them, Petra assumed were filled with the multitudes of oils, creams and lotions used in the various types and styles of massages that the spa offered. There was even a small warming oven for heating up the stones used in hot rock massages. What Petra found truly surprising, however, was that the cabinets all sported good solid locks on them. Darting a quick, appraising glance over the cabinets' contents, Petra found that nearly all of the bottles and tubes kept locked within bore clearly identifiable medical labels. If the therapists at the spa were licensed to proscribe and dispense medications, then it certainly explained why everyone she had seen was dressed in hospital scrubs.

When directed, Petra hopped up onto the table and laid down on her stomach, her face cradled by the thickly cushioned hole at the head of the table. Trisha began in on the treatment almost immediately, pausing only long enough to slip on a pair of nitrile gloves and pull out a selection of massage oils. Starting at the shoulders and working her way down to the fingertips in long smooth motions, Trisha began be massaging Petra's arms and upper back.

Despite the young woman's expert ministrations, her fingers gently kneading deep into the muscle tissue, Petra was finding it impossible to relax and enjoy the experience. The very thought of this strange woman running her hands up and down her essentially naked body had Petra feeling very uncomfortable. Her inability to express this discomfort, the need to keep it bottled up and hidden so as not to blow her cover only exacerbated the feelings. Aside from Sandro, who she loved, the only other people to see and touch her while naked were the agency's medical staff, who really didn't count. They were doctors and technicians; it was their job and she was Conditioned to not care about their routine poking and prodding. Besides, to them she was more a piece of cutting-edge technology than a teenaged girl.

After only a short while, Petra's discomfort began to be superseded by a growing sense of intrigued curiosity. She was starting to notice a clear sense of concern and frustration from Trisha, the pressure from her hands slowly increasing. Quickly realizing that the pressure Trisha was applying was approaching the point a normal person would find painful, Petra began to make small noises of growing discomfort. Trisha noticed this and immediately apologized, expressing her concern. "Oh, I'm sorry." She fell silent, but from Trisha's unsteady breathing pattern Petra could tell that the young woman was debating on whether or not to say more. "I don't mean to pry, but is everything all right with you?"

"Yes, why?" Petra answered hesitantly, knowing immediately what the problem was. Her mind churned furiously, seeking some plausible explanation that she could feed to Trisha and have her accept it and be satisfied.

"Well, it's just that your muscles are the stiffest and tensest that I have ever felt and that is a clear sign of extremely high stress loads building up within the body."

"Oh, well, I _am_ in fashion design school and it _is_ pretty competitive. I mean, just last week, another girl totally screwed up a costume design assignment by making a mid-Victorian period dress when we were _clearly_ supposed to make an early-Elizabethan period dress. It still looked okay, but the teacher was super mad. This was her third mistake and so he kicked her out of the program right then and there, can you believe that? Not that I really care; she was a total bitch anyway and that just makes one less person fighting for the internship spots." Petra rambled on and on inanely, flicking her hair back over her shoulder and speaking in a voice dripping with haughty disdain.

"I…I see," Trisha said flatly, once Petra had run down and fallen silent. "Either way, I strongly recommend that you make an appointment with your doctor to get this looked at. Stress at these levels can lead to serious and potentially life-threatening health problems."

Petra let out an astonished gasp, lifting herself far enough off the table to twist around and stare back at Trisha. "Oh my God, really?"

"Yes really," the young woman replied with emphatic seriousness. "Uncontrolled stress can wreak absolute havoc with the entire body."

Petra bit at her lower lip nervously, an anxious fear shinning in her eyes. She pitched her voice to a weak, breathy whisper that cracked and stuttered from the shock. "Wow, I…I had no idea. Y-yeah, I'll definitely do something about it right away." At Trisha's sharp, simple nod of acceptance, the young woman returning to the task of massaging Petra's legs, Petra felt a surge of supreme self-satisfaction. She had succeeded in diffusing what could have been a disastrous situation. If Trisha had discovered the real reason for the unnaturally stiff density of Petra's muscle tissue, she would likely now be dead, with Petra frantically searching for some place to stuff the body. That would have opened up a whole host of new problems, the least of which being the almost certain failure of the mission. Besides which, Petra hated having to kill innocent bystanders. It was all just so unfair to Ferro and her people. They did so much work cleaning up after her and the other girls, smoothing things over and taking care of all the myriad little details that made each mission run as efficiently as possible. It just didn't feel right to Petra, giving them even more things to deal with that they shouldn't have to.

Puffed up by her feelings of accomplishment, Petra was finally able to relax somewhat and actually start to enjoy the massage. Even better was that, in her more comfortable state of mind, Petra was able to pay closer attention to exactly what it was that Trisha was doing and how exactly she was doing it. She was silently memorizing each motion and technique, already eagerly awaiting her chance to try some of it out on Sandro. She just knew that he would be delighted at the idea of receiving a nice, relaxing massage from her.

All too soon, however, the massage was over and Petra was peeling herself off of the table and slipping back into her robe. A faint flush of embarrassment crept up into her face as she was forced to pause for a moment with one hand on the table's edge. Her legs felt as if they were made of half-congealed gelatine and she had to force them straight to keep from collapsing to the floor. Trisha offered her an indulgent, sympathetic smile, understanding how Petra was feeling. The massage had ended up being slightly more effective in relaxing her than Petra had anticipated.

When she was steady and sure that she wouldn't fall down, Petra retrieved her robe and allowed herself to be led back out into the group relaxation center and to the salon with its row of manicure chairs. They arrived to find Yurik already there, seated in one of the chairs near the fireplace, a glass of red wine in hand. He turned from the magazine he was leafing through as Trisha and Petra approached, treating them both to a broad, winning smile. His face seemed to glow from the after-effects of his facial treatment, the skin looking softer and suppler than before. Grinning, his eyes flashing with mirth as he set the glass down on the table, he called out teasing, "You seem to be a little weak in the knees, my dear. I'm thinking that means you enjoyed your massage?"

Adjusting her robe so that it deliberately gaped open ever-so-slightly, giving Yurik a quick flash of lightly-bronzed inner thigh every time she took a step, Petra responded with a light girlish giggle. "Well it sure seems to have done the trick. I feel all loosened up and relaxed."

"I am glad to hear it," Yurik replied happily as he took up his wine once more. There was a slight hitch to his voice that belied the fact that he had indeed noticed the tantalizing view being presented to him. Whether he took it as a deliberate act or a happy accident, Petra wasn't sure, though in Yurik's present mental state – not to mention his physical state, Petra noticed with some amusement – she doubted that he cared. She watched him carefully as she mounted the chair that Trisha led her to, trying to gauge his reactions. To her surprise, he seemed flustered and embarrassed upon noticing his current…predicament and began shifting awkwardly in his seat, plucking at his robe and rearranging it over his lap in an effort to minimise its obviousness.

This display of almost juvenile shyness shocked Petra. The man had a reputation as something of a womanizing scoundrel, spending most nights out socializing at the local nightclubs. From everything that Petra had heard about him through Sandro, as well as her own observations of him during their meeting, she had had no reason to doubt this assessment of the man's character. Now, however, she was being force to further re-evaluate her opinion of him. Clearly the free spirited playboy persona that Yurik displayed was nothing more than a carefully constructed mask, hiding the true man within. Petra found this fact strangely endearing and couldn't help but ponder on what other personal secrets lurked in the shadowed recesses of Yurik's mind and soul?

"So let me guess," Petra said while Trisha hovered at her side trimming, buffing and polishing her fingernails. "You used to date the head masseuse, right?" She flashed a sly, teasing grin over at him, head canted to one side and resting in the palm of her free hand. He stared back at her oddly, as though she had suddenly sprouted horns. "This lovely spa treatment," she said to clarify, lifting her head enough to wave her hand about to indicate their surroundings. "You used your friendship with Francois to get us that dinner reservations, so I assume you must have had some kind of connection to get us this little after-hours treat as well."

Understanding dawning within him, Yurik titled his head back and laughed heartily. Lowering his gaze back down, he shook his head sadly and let out a theatrically overemphasized sigh. The façade was back in place. "Ah, if only my dear. Actually, there was no need to call in a favour. The Palace Merano is a world class resort, remember. Some of their guests keep rather abnormal schedules, so the spa remains open twenty-four hours a day in order to accommodate them." Petra nodded slowly, his explanation making sense. Sandro _had_ told her about the nature of the hotel's guest list and how it included celebrity actors and music stars. Those kinds of individuals, especially the music stars, were used to a more nocturnal schedule. Some of them very well might enjoy a nice massage or dip in the Jacuzzi after returning from a night out on the town.

The hour-and-a-half Petra spent having first her hands and then her feet fussed over and pampered was spent in easy, light-hearted conversation with Yurik. Another therapist arrived with a glass of Champaign shortly after Trisha began working on Petra's nails, which she sipped at contentedly over the course of the hour. As before, at dinner, much of the conversation revolved around Yurik's continued regaling her with stories of his past, intermittently broken by Petra's contributing of the odd hastily thrown-together anecdote or two. Most she kept silent, nodding at his words and laughing at the appropriate points. Again, as before at dinner, there was far less acting required.

"Well if that's the case, then why aren't you and your brother as close anymore?" Petra commented at one point, observing the faint, almost wistful smile tugging at the corners of his mouth and casting a shadow of emotion across his face. He had been speaking of how, after his brother Dmitri moved to Italy with his family, they had begun to drift apart and how this distant relationship still pained him at times.

"His wife and I…we don't get along very well," said quietly. His gaze was fixed on the dark ruby contents of his glass, which he was idly working back and forth in his hands. "The three of us, we grew up together and when she married Dmitri I…did not take it well."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Petra replied, surprising herself somewhat at the amount of genuine sympathy she felt for him. Yurik nodded his thanks and seemed to brighten then. The past was beyond reach, he claimed and if the brothers were not as close as they once were, they still spoke often and fondly.

Against all odds and her initial misgivings, Petra was enjoying herself immensely and was quite disappointed when it the pampering came to its end. However, as the old saying went: "All good things must come to an end" and eventually Petra found herself seated in the passenger seat of Yurik's Mercedes. Pulling out of the hotel's parking lot, Yurik merged onto the main boulevard that ran along the front of the hotel and headed deeper into Merano's heart. "So Yurik, the night is still young; what's next on the list of things to do?" The digital clock on the dashboard consol read as only a quarter to eleven, which still left hours yet for any further night-life activities. Petra glanced over at the man, reclining back into the plush leather-wrapped bucket seat. She had her hands folded simply atop her purse, which was nestled snugly in her lap. A faint, teasing grin was all that disturbed the mask of calm composure that she presented to him.

Dividing his attention between her and the road, Yurik cast quick, fleeting looks across the car. "You're right Renata; the night is indeed still young. I was thinking of spending the next portion of it out at a nice nightclub I go to sometimes. You do like to dance, I hope?"

Petra's teasing smile froze on her face at Yurik's words. It felt as if something deep and powerful was churning inside of her. Memories stirred from within the shadowy recesses of her mind. Something about…dancing; why did that sound familiar? Why did the notion of dancing seem so important to her?

As the stirred memories fell away, unclaimed and slipped back beneath the buried surface of her subconscious, Petra gave herself a vigorous mental shake and snapped back to awareness. Yurik was still watching her expectantly, awaiting her answer. Her beaming smile lit up the whole interior of the car and she replied in delighted surprise. "Why yes, actually, I love to dance."

The air was clean and crisp in Petra's lungs as she and Yurik strode up to the heavy oak door to Club Sketch, an up-scale martini lounge that catered almost exclusively to the town's wealthiest residents and out-of-town visitors. Each breath was marked by a softly billowing cloud that curled away, trailing up into the night sky. The sound of Petra's heels clicking against the chilled concrete sidewalk echoed off of the brick buildings running along either side of the narrow road. The rhythmic thumping of Yurik's own footfalls provided a steady cadence as the pair walked arm-in-arm.

As late into the evening as it was, the line of people waiting to get in was less than a half-dozen long. Even so, this dwindled stream of prospective patrons failed to dull the attentive focus of the burly, muscle-bound man standing firm beside the door. Wrapped in a thin black windbreaker that bore the emblem of a private security company large on the left breast, meaty arms folded across a hard barrel chest, the bouncer ran an intense, critical gaze along the meagre crowd.

Ignoring the gathered men and women, who were clustered together in pairs against the cold, Yurik walked confidently up to the bouncer with one hand extended in pre-emptive expectation. The hard, thin line of the bouncer's mouth curled upwards ever-so-slightly at the sight of the other man and he unfolded one arm to clasp the offered hand in greeting. "Good evening, Signore Balašev. I was starting to wonder if maybe you weren't planning on coming out tonight."

Yurik laughed in response, shifting his grip on Petra so that his arm was wrapped snugly about her waist, hugging her close to his side. "I'm afraid I had other plans that kept me busy most of the night, Roberto."

The bouncer, Roberto, eyed Petra up and down, taking in her silk dress that appeared to practically shimmer and glow in the moonlight. "So I can see, Signore." Stepping slightly to one side, the heavy-set man reached behind him to pull open the door, dipping his head slightly and waving them inside. "Enjoy your evening."

The bar's interior was done up with strong surrealist design elements. The lighting slowly shifted between a deep rose and vibrant blue. A mirrored wall bisected the main room, providing some small amount of privacy to those who wished to sit and perhaps enjoy a meal picked out from the club's minimal menu offerings. There was a modest-sized stage at the far end of the room, with the floor space immediately in front cleared out for dancing. There was a band currently playing on the stage, a trio of performers whose music sounded like a blend of indie rock and blues, with a heavy jazz influence. The vocalist stood behind a small electric keyboard, with a drummer and guitarist providing the accompanying music. All three were young, in their mid-twenties, Petra guessed, with lean builds and dressed all in black. The singer, his thin, high cheek-boned face clean-shaven and with short black hair gelled up into a myriad of thorny spikes, was just finishing up the song's third verse as she and Yurik walked into the bar.

"_Sleep in peace, when the day is done._

_And this old world is a new world_

_And a bold world_

_For me."_

The guitarist and drummer immediately launched into a short, heavy musical interlude right on the heels of the singer's last words, playing him into the start of the fourth verse. His voice was almost hauntingly smooth, the high notes sending chills down Petra's spine. A large number of the club's patrons were on their feet, whistling and cheering appreciatively as the last notes of the song faded away, leaving the band members smiling and nodding in thanks.

The bouncer's words ended up proving to be almost prophetic. Half-way through the night Petra was finding it increasingly difficult to muster up the willpower to keep from enjoying herself _too_ much. Her digestive tract had been augmented with extra absorptive layers designed to help her safely metabolize various toxic compounds in order to neutralize their effects upon her and alcohol was one of those compounds. There were, however, limits to just how much she could safely process and after a steady flow of cocktails lasting well past two hours long, Petra's bloodstream was nearing the point of over-saturation. Her head felt loosely packed with cotton and a faint buzz seemed to vibrate through her entire body. She finding it hard to focus clearly on individual objects and her equilibrium was badly distorted. In short: she was drunk.

Things would have been fine, if not for circumstances depriving her of control of the situation. Upon entering the bar, they had been almost immediately greeted by several of Yurik's close associates, who had insisted upon introductions being made. The rest was a whirlwind blur of fruity-flavoured vodka drinks, interspersed with desiccated, bone-dry gin martinis. Every time she had tried to slow down and space the drink out, one of Yurik's friends would egg her on and, to the cheers and promptings of the crowd, she would be forced to suck another drink back, her glass finding itself refilled almost before it left her lips. To attempt anything less would have been to break with her cover and expose herself to suspicion.

Leaning sharply forward, hands braced to either side of the sink, Petra sucked in air through tightly clenched teeth and fought the waves of dizziness and disorientation assailing her. Ice-cold water slid down her cheeks and dripped from the tip of her nose. Looking up into the mirror, her bleary-eyed reflection glared back at her sternly. All around her the bathroom dipped and spun crazily and if not for her death-grip on the sink, Petra was certain that she would have been sent sprawling to the tiled floor.

Reaching out hesitantly, she managed to scoop up a small amount of the water held within the porcelain basin and bring it up to her lips. Letting the cool, refreshing fluid trickle down her throat, Petra sighed wondrously. Her tongue felt swollen to twice its normal size and wrapped in fur besides. The water helped sooth both it and her burning throat.

A sudden knock on the bathroom door made her jerk and spin in alarm. Instantly the entire world exploded into a madman's nightmare of swirling colours and glaring, piercing lights. All sense of balance evaporated and Petra felt herself teetering over sideways. The blessing of her super-human reflexes was all that saved her from ending up having to peel herself off of the floor and even then, she stumbled to her knees before managing to catch and right herself.

"Renata, are you alright in there?" Yurik called out, revealing himself to be the source of the mysterious banging noise reverberating around inside Petra's skull. "You have been in there for ten minutes."

Ten minutes? Had it really been that long already? And why was it proving so difficult to focus on anything? Yurik's voice sounded strangely distorted, almost as if she were listening to him through a screen of water. Oh yes, now she remembered: she was drunk. Drunk? How had that happened? Petra knew she had more self-control than that. She was a professional; she didn't go out and get drunk. Certainly not while on a mission. Was she on a mission? Yes, of course she was. That was why she was all dressed up in such a pretty dress. It _was_ a pretty dress too, all shiny and smooth beneath her fingers. Sandro would be _so_ amazed at how pretty she looked in it. Or had he already said so? She couldn't remember for some reason. Why couldn't she remember? What was going on? Oh yes, that's right, now she remembered: she was drunk. Wait, drunk? How had _that_ happened?

"Renata?" Yurik repeated, letting forth a second series of thunderous poundings upon the door.

"This water tastes _so_ good," Petra called out in reply, bursting out into a helpless fit of giggling. _Madre de Dio__, now I'm giggling like an idiot! Damn it all Petra, get a hold of yourself!_

"Renata?"

"I'm…I'm fine," Petra said, stumbling back from the sink. She had to gulp in air, swallowing reflexively as her stomach churned nauseously. "I just…I need to pee." Turning on one heel, she managed to work her way across the narrow divide and collapse onto the closed seat of a toilet. Closing the stall door, she fished around inside of her purse for a small, flattened metal case. Pulling open the lid, she withdrew a tiny syringe the size of her pinkie finger, along with a sterilized needle and a small glass phial. Connecting needle and syringe, she jabbed it into the phial's lid and extracted a measured amount of the clear fluid within. Then, setting her purse aside and hiking up the hem of her skirt until it was bunched up around her waist, Petra slammed the needle home into the crease of her leg, where thigh met hip. Stabbing down on the plunger with her thumb, the quarter-shot of pure Conditioning medication roared through her veins.

Petra shot up straight as the drug cocktail took almost immediate effect, burning away all traces of intoxication. A wealth of sensory information flooded into her brain as her senses sharpened to inhuman levels. She could make out the grain structure of the wooden door to the stall beneath the pastel blue paint. She could hear the piercing hum of the electricity flowing through the wires and sharp buzzing of the florescent lights. Inhaling, her nose suddenly wrinkled in disgust. Most unfortunately, she could also smell the overwhelming odour of disinfectant that didn't completely mask the underlying scent of stale urine, faeces and vomit.

Nevertheless, it was a vast improvement and, letting loose a deep sigh of relief, Petra packed away her self-medication kit and stood back up. The world steadied around her, everything snapping back into sharp, crystal-clear focus. Standing before the mirror once more, she turned on the water and let it run so that Yurik would think she was washing her hands. Inspecting her reflection critically, Petra made sure that her face bore a mask of inebriated stupor and that she was staggering and wavering suitably as she made her way over to the bathroom door. Yurik would be expecting her to be completely plastered and it wouldn't do for her cover to come out stone-cold sober.

Pulling open the door, Petra found Yurik standing just on the other side, an expression of mild concern creasing his features. She stopped short, blinking in surprise and wobbling slightly. Then, looking up at him, she broke out into a broad, ear-to-ear grin and giggled drunkenly. "Hi Yurik. What are you doing here? This is the lady's bathroom silly; you can't go in there."

"Are you all right? You were in there for a while."

"Of course I'm all right," Petra scoffed, waving away his concern and inadvertently slapping and almost knocking over a plaster sculpture that Yurik managed to grab and set back upright with a muffled curse. She affected not to notice at all. "I told you: I needed to pee. Why? You didn't think I was in there throwing up, did you? Silly man, I can hold my liquor better than _that_."

Chuckling now in renewed good-natured humour, Yurik nodded sagely while wrapping one arm around Petra's shoulders to steady her. "Oh, I can assure you that there won't be anyone questioning your ability to hold liquor after tonight Renata. I know a few grizzled old soldiers and sailors who would have walked away, humbled and humiliated in comparison to your performance."

_Oh God,_ Petra thought, eyes widening slightly._ How much alcohol did I actually drink?_ For the life of her she couldn't remember. If not for the surge of Conditioning medication dampening and restricting her emotions, Petra would have been nearing a panic attack. She knew that there were distinct physical limitations to the human body's ability to metabolize alcohol, based upon a person's individual height, mass and relative metabolism. What if Petra had exceeded those limitations? Should she be able to stand? Should she even be conscious? Yurik didn't seem suspicious though, which was good. Perhaps his own inebriation was clouding his judgment and impairing his ability to think rationally. It was certainly something to be hoped.

Steering her back to their seats, Yurik left Petra standing beside the table and took up his coat. "Now then, my dear, if you're feeling refreshed, what do you say we head out? It's getting late and Emilio is about ready to start closing up. Besides," he added with a roguish grin, "I still have some plans for how we can spend the rest of the night."

"Oh, sounds like somebody has something naughty in mind," Petra purred, deliberately spoiling the effect by once again breaking into giggles.

Shrugging into his overcoat, Yurik circled back around the table and slipped Petra's arm into his and walked her to the door. Outside, the chill in the air had deepened, leaving the windows frost-rimmed and the surrounding roofs dusted with white. A blue and yellow taxi cab sat waiting for them, the engine running and exhaust smoke pluming up into the sky. Shivering in the cold, Petra made a mad-dash for the cab, jumping into the back seat and revelling in the sudden blanket of warmth that enveloped her. Yurik was close behind on her heels, sliding in and shutting the door. The driver had obviously already been given the address of Yurik's small villa on the North-Eastern edge of Merano, as he immediately threw the car into gear and drove away.

Few words were shared between the pair during the drive. Growing anticipation for what was soon to come kept them both wrapped in silence. They each knew what was about to happen, though Yurik's expectations were wildly different from what Petra had in mind. Eventually though, Yurik decided to venture forth and break the silence, feeling that allowing it to continue would only foster the growth of an awkward tension that would only hamper with the remainder of his planned…festivities. "So you seemed to have enjoyed yourself."

"Oh my God, yes!" Petra exclaimed exuberantly. "I had _so_ much fun! This whole night has been amazing! And you have such nice friends. They all kept buying me drinks all night long; they were so _nice_!"

"Well I'm glad you liked them," Yurik laughed. "They certainly liked you."

"Why wouldn't they like me?" Petra inquired drunkenly, flopping over to lean against Yurik's shoulder. She twisted her head around to stare up into his face. The angle presented him a perfect view down the front of her dress and she purred slightly as he shifted, his bicep rubbing up against the side of her breast. "_Everybody _likes me! I'm an infinitely likeable person."

Yurik chuckled, shaking his head slowly in wonder. "That you are, my dear; that you are."

Staring down into her eyes, Yurik's pulse raced wildly. His blood roared in his veins, drowning out all other sounds, drowning out thought. With painful slowness, he brought his head down, lowering his face to hers. Petra titled her face up slightly to meet his, their lips brushing together ever-so-slightly. Darting just the tip of her tongue out, she licked at his lower lip, probing, teasing. His one hand came up to cup the side of her face, drawing her forward into him. Their mouths met, lips parting, twisting and locking together. Their tongues swirled and danced over and around each other. His other hand slowly slid up Petra's waist, gently massaging her hip and side. It slid around to rub at the bare skin of her back, fingers slipping beneath the fabric of her dress to tickle and tease at her ribs.

Petra's nose was filled to overflowing with the mingled scents of vodka, cognac, the sharp pungent musk of Yurik's cologne and the underlying odour of Yurik's own body. She sent up profound prayers of thanks for the Conditioning cocktail circulating through her bloodstream and keeping her stomach from rebelling in disgust and shame. It had nothing to do with Yurik; in fact she found the tantalizing blend of his cologne mixed with his natural odours to be mildly pleasant. But he wasn't Sandro and Sandro was the only man she wanted to experience such an intimate embrace with.

Not a moment too soon as far as Petra was concerned, though she doubted Yurik felt the same way, the taxi pulled up to the front gate to his villa. Forced to pull away from one another, they both exited the vehicle and after Yurik paid the driver, punched in the key code that unlocked the gate and escorted her onto the property. The cobblestoned driveway led up to a large, detached double garage. A narrower cobblestone pathway split off and rounded a well-tended garden of carefully pruned shrubs and led up to a broad set of stairs that in turn led up to the front door. The property and the villa were not overly large, at least not in comparison to some of the places Petra had seen, but they were both well cared for and spoke of a quiet dignity that was, for the most part, mirrored in their owner.

The covered veranda opened out into a narrow main hall that ran to the center of the house, where it opened up to accommodate a grand, curving staircase leading to the second floor. To Petra's immediate left was an open archway, with the main living room visible beyond. To her right was a heavy wood door that she guessed might lead to a small library or formal sitting room.

Yurik led Petra into the living room, which was tastefully furnished in a chic, modern style. The furniture and artistic accent pieces were all very masculine and she could practically smell the testosterone oozing out from the walls. Plopping down on the sofa, Petra reclined back into the thick cushions, bending down to unbuckle and remove her shoes. She folded her feet up underneath her, reaching down to massage them gently. Yurik tossed his coat across the back of a chair and then, walking around behind the sofa, reached out with both hands to tenderly cup Petra's face. Titling her head back until she was looking up directly into his eyes, he leaned down to plant a soft, fleeting, almost teasing kiss to her slightly parted lips. He then pulled away sharply, leaving Petra faintly flushed and blinking. "I'm going to go upstairs to change. Make yourself comfortable. The kitchen is at the end of the hall, on your left. There's wine in the chilling rack and there should be vodka, gin and rum in the fridge; feel free to help yourself."

Petra put on a show of having to swallow reflexively several times before managing to find her voice again, working out only a weak, breathy croak once she did so. "Sounds great; thanks." Yurik flashed her a charming grin, bobbed his head shortly and was gone.

Listening to his footsteps trailing up the stairs, Petra waited for the sounds to fade before giving a slow twenty count and then sprang into action. Her hand was inside her purse and digging out the tiny USB flash drive that Lucretia had given her what seemed days ago now. Pausing, she fingered the concealed microphone until it was scant centimetres from her mouth. "I am inside Yurik's villa and am beginning my search for his primary computer. I repeat, beginning mission phase two; stand by for stage three and extraction."

Making her way back out into the hall, padding along softly on bare feet, Petra first checked the door to the right of the entranceway. It was indeed a formal sitting room, with the heavier furniture bearing a more classical style that hinted at an old world, gentlemanly sophistication. There was a faint odour of cigar smoke and fine liquor hanging on the air, odours that likely had permeated the wood long ago to the point where they had become a permanent part of the room's natural atmosphere.

Around to the far end of the hall, past a linen closet and Petra hit upon her target. The combination office/private library was of decent size, richly furnished in dark wood. A heavy mahogany desk sat in front of a bay window overlooking the south side of the property. Numerous books on a multitude of subjects filled the shelves, their leather bindings crisp and smooth and bearing not a trace of having ever actually been read more than once or twice. Petra frowned as a fleeting thought skittered across the surface of her mind. Claes would be appalled at the notion of using such tomes as mere…decoration pieces.

Crossing swiftly to the desk, Petra searched through it with mechanical, practised precision. The contents of the first two drawers were quickly rifled through, coming up with nothing of value. The third bottom drawer was of course locked, but a few seconds spent with a pair of hairpins had the lock popped and the drawer open before her. Again she came up empty though, having to stifle a flare of disappointment and irritation. The files held within the drawer were all of mundane, everyday financial transactions; nothing with any connection to Yurik's arms dealing business. Closing and re-locking the drawer, Petra gave the room a quick sweep just to be thorough before moving back out into the hall. It was obvious to her that Yurik kept his personal computer upstairs, likely in his own bedroom. That would certainly complicate matters.

Resigned to the fact that she would have to wait until she got upstairs, Petra went to the kitchen and fetched two tall-stemmed glasses and a bottle of wine. She could hear Yurik's footsteps approaching the stairs and she quickly darted back to the living room, setting glasses and bottle down on the glass-topped coffee table and curling up on the sofa just as the man entered the room. He had changed out of his formal suit, donning instead a nice pair of designer jeans that perfectly accentuated the strong lines of his legs. His striped, blue and grey silk shirt was left un-tucked, the top two buttons undone to show off a thick mat of curly black hair that was heavily sprinkled with grey. The renewed scent of cologne tickled Petra's nose, almost masking the scents of toothpaste and soap. Tiny beads of moisture still clung to Yurik's face and neck.

He didn't sit down immediately, instead detouring to a small Blackwood table positioned up against one wall. He fiddled with something there for a moment and soft music filled the room, wireless speakers mounted in the corners causing the sound to surround and envelop them. Next, he withdrew a tiny controller from the table's drawer, aiming it towards the sleek, modern styled fireplace set in the middle of the room's inner wall. The fireplace sprang to life, the gas-fed flames dancing and wavering. The lights dimmed down low until those flickering flames were the only significant source of illumination. Only then did Yurik join her on the couch.

Accepting the glass that Petra offered, Yurik sank back into the couch's cushions, twisted around with one leg folded up so that he could look directly at her. They spent some time just chatting amiably, Yurik clearly content to just relax and enjoy her simple presence. For the most part, Petra was happy to indulge his desire for quiet conversation; anything to delay the moment where the inevitable had to happen. She had already gotten a taste of what was to come in the taxi cab and she was beginning to dread it. The need of the mission, however, come before personal qualms and before long she felt the weight of duty pressing down upon her and she was left with no choice but to surrender to her professional responsibilities.

"Yurik stop," she said abruptly, cutting him off in mid-sentence. She toyed with her half-empty glass, rolling it around in her hands and squirming awkwardly. She pointedly avoided meeting his eye, glancing away as if she were embarrassed. "This whole night: dinner, the spa, the bar, everything…it has been so wonderful. I've had such a great time and you've been _so_ nice to me. You've been a perfect gentleman, something I never would have thought even existed before meeting you. But…but you know how nice guys finish last? Well, it's true. And as great of a guy as you are, us girls only have so much patience, you know? We're only willing to wait around for so long before we have to move on." She turned her face slowly, head still lowered so that she had to peer up through her eyelashes to look up at him. His face was frozen, lips parted and eyes wide. He hardly seemed to be breathing as he waited expectantly for what she was about to say. "Yurik, we both know what this evening is all about; why we're both here. So why don't we just cut to the chase and do what we both came here to do?"

The moments of silence that dragged on afterwards hung thick in air, slowly tightening into a constricting wall of heaviness that pressed tight around Petra's chest, choking off breath as she waited for Yurik's reaction. She could make out the minute flickers of muscle movement in his face that told of conflicting emotions sweeping through him. However, in the end, rather than the indignant outrage that she was half-expecting from him, rather than the sudden, explosive burst of lust and desire, Yurik shocked and surprised her by instead tilting his head back and start _laughing_!

Had she thought that he was laughing at her, Petra would have more than mildly upset. However, she could make out the tones of dry, self-deprecating humour in his soft chuckles and it was instead curiosity that filled her, not anger. "What's so funny?" she asked flatly, her voice tight to give the impression of loosely restrained annoyance lurking just beneath the surface.

"I'm sorry, it's nothing," Yurik replied, lowering his head. There was a slightly wry twist to his mouth and he stared at the sofa cushion between them, his gaze inward and withdrawn into reflective thought. "It's just that…well…this isn't exactly how I pictured this evening turning out, to be perfectly honest."

"And what's wrong with how things have gone?" Petra asked mildly, now allowing her genuine curiosity to creep into her voice. "I think things have gone wonderfully."

"Oh they have, I assure you. I honestly haven't enjoyed myself this much in…years, to be honest. But…well…" he grew slightly uncomfortable then, glancing away in embarrassment and shifting around awkwardly. "To be blunt, Renata, _I_ was supposed to be the one seducing _you_. Not the other way around."

A slow, knowing smile tugged at the corners of Petra's mouth until she was grinning from ear-to-ear and before she could stop herself, she burst out into tittering, girlish giggles of pure, genuine mirth. Tears sprang to her eyes that she had to wipe away before she managed to regain control of herself. "Oh God, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to…uh…step on your toes."

"Oh no, no it's fine," Yurik exclaimed quickly, waving away her own apology as unnecessary. "It was just unexpected, is all. I was surprised, certainly, but hardly upset by it. It is like you said earlier, at dinner: I too like a partner who knows what they want and are willing to reach out and take it."

"So you don't mind that I've been seducing you?" Petra breathed softly, inching over closer towards him.

"No, not at all."

"I'm glad to hear that." Petra's voice had taken on a sultry, husky quality to it and she gently ran her hands up Yurik's broad, muscular chest. She reached up to cup his face, drawing him down to brush her lips up against his. It was a fleeting, teasing contact, which she sprang away from and almost leapt to the far end of the couch, putting as much distance between them as possible without actually getting up and leaving.

Yurik was at first surprised and confused, but the teasing, seductive expression on her face and the unbridled look of lust burning in her eyes set his blood aflame and he had to swallow the sudden lump in his throat. With agonizing slowness, Petra uncoiled one leg, extending it across the unfathomable gap between them. Gently, tenderly, she ran her bare foot up his thigh, stopping just short of his crotch. She teased him in this way for several moments, her toes slowly tracing circles up, over his groin, down one thigh, back up the other and then around again. "Come and get what you want Yurik," Petra breathed, lips curled into a small smile. "Reach out and take me."

It was too much for Yurik to bear. This sultry, olive-skinned Goddess, with her dark eyes of liquid fire and raven hair cascading in a glistening wave to tumble about smooth, flawless shoulders was on full display before him; presenting herself just for him. The hem of Petra's dress had hiked up slightly, giving Yurik a tantalizing view of immaculately smooth skin up to just past her knee. Her dress moulded itself perfectly to ever single line and curve of her body. He could just make out the hard, jutting nubs of her nipples poking out from the nearly paper-thin silk. His blood was boiling in his veins. Every fibre of his body screamed for her, demanded that she be his. He had known, the instant he had watched her swaying steps as she walked away from him and Armand, that she was perfect. A divine spirit given female flesh. And he could deny the voices roaring in his mind no longer; he could deny his urges no longer.

In a sudden, explosive burst of movement, Yurik did just as she had begged of him: reached out and claimed her. His hand snapped down and locked around her slim ankle. In one, fluid motion he pulled down on her leg, drawing her across the couch towards him, while at the same time rising and leaning forward so that he ended up crouched over top of her, gazing down into her eyes. She squealed and giggled almost like a little girl as she slid across the couch. The slight friction between microfiber and silk caused the fabric of her dress to ride up even further and Yurik felt his heart skip a beat as he gazed down at the expanse of silky-smooth thighs that were left exposed.

Melting into his embrace, Petra mewled softly, snaking her arms up to wrap around Yurik's neck and pull him further down on top of her. They were both panting as their mouths writhed, tongues once again dancing back and forth. One hand was pressed to the couch next to her head, bracing his weight. His right hand was working its way up and down her thigh, inching ever closer to her waist with each pass. In her mind's eye, it was Sandro's face hovering inches away from hers; it was Sandro's hand she felt caressing her body. Such internal fantasizing was the only was she could think of to stand what Yurik was doing to her without throwing up in his face.

"Yurik wait," she gasped, prying herself free from the vacuum seal his mouth had on her lips. He broke off the kiss, raising himself up slightly so that he could see her better. "Um…as lovely as this is, I don't think this couch is big enough for the both of us. Someone is going to fall off and hurt themselves."

"Ah, good point," Yurik chuckled. "In that case then, perhaps you would be interested in moving this to a more comfortable location; to the boudoir?"

"That sounds good to me."

Disentangling themselves from one another, they both rose and quickly crossed the room to the hallway and climbed the stairs to the second floor. Nervous anxiety had Petra's stomach roiling. The clock was ticking away slowly yet inexorably and she was running out of time. She needed to find his computer and secure it before sedating him or the largest part of the mission would be a bust. Interrogating Yurik would be useless without some concrete physical data to back up whatever information he provided.

Up the stairs and towards the master bedroom they strode, Yurik right behind her and with his hands resting gently on her hips, guiding her. Every now and then he leaned down to plant tiny, tender kisses to her bare shoulders and the nape of her neck, even occasionally nibbling at her earlobes. The feel of his teeth oh-so-gently scraping across the sensitive skin around her ears sent shivers coursing through Petra. Each time, her hands tightened convulsively on the strap of her purse, which she had retrieved from the floor and brought with her, ostensibly for the pack of cigarettes kept within.

Walking into the master bedroom, Petra was instantly struck by the blatantly obvious, undeniable fact that this was every inch a man's bedroom. From the pale brown walls to the darker oak furniture to the clean, modern lines, the room exuded an overwhelming sense of masculinity that Petra, accustomed to the understated, refined elegance of the agency compound and Sandro's own style of brutally plain utilitarianism, found shocking in its intensity.

Giving a quick, subtle sweep of the room as she strode to the foot of the bed, Petra felt her heart leap and her pulse surge in excitement. There was a desk pushed up into a small alcove niche on one side of the room and atop that desk was a laptop. Jackpot.

The heavy oaken door closed behind her and she could feel Yurik looming at her back. His hands caressed her shoulders, sliding up and down her arms. They curled around to glide along the exposed skin of her back, sweeping around to rub at the smooth, flat expanse of her stomach. Petra giggled and squirmed helplessly as that gentle rubbing turned into a playful tickling, his fingers spidering their way all across her stomach and ribs. All the while, Yurik continued to plant light, fleeting kisses to her neck and shoulders.

Yurik most assuredly knew what he was doing in regards to pleasing a woman, with many long years of experience under his belt. As much as Petra hated to admit it, a part of her was enjoying what was being done to her. Her mind still screamed and raged at the indignity, the betrayal of Sandro's love, but her body cared nothing for the wailing protests of her brain and Yurik's experienced touch was setting off a roaring Hellfire deep in the pit of her stomach.

She didn't feel his hands rise up to the back of her neck, fingers working at the tiny clasp. She was only dimly aware of her dress sliding down her body, leaving her all but naked beneath his gaze. The only piece of clothing left protecting her modesty was the skimpy black, lace-trimmed panties she wore. They weren't a part of the set she had bought earlier in the day. Those, she had adamantly refused to wear. The dress she might have been willing to wear for Yurik's benefit, but the lingerie she had been bound and determined to be for Sandro and Sandro alone.

Yurik's hands traced a dizzying maze of lines and swirls up and down her body, poking and prodding, ticking and teasing until she was reduced to a singular bundle of stimulated nerve-endings. She was finding it almost impossible to keep her legs from trembling and the fire growing below her bellybutton was rapidly approaching unbearable levels.

Lost in a daze of her own passions, Petra didn't even know she was moving until she felt the cool, silky fabric of the duvet against her bare back and she knew that she was on Yurik's bed. Glancing down the length of her body, she could see him kneeling on the edge of the mattress, shirt off and cast aside. Petra's eyes widened; his chest and arms were so _big_! So much bigger than Sandro's. And the hair! Yurik's entire chest was a mass of black and grey curls, even his stomach bearing a thin carpet of manly fur.

A sudden jolt of pure electric fire ripped up Petra's leg, stabbing directly into her brain as Yurik ran the fingers of one hand up the bare sole of her foot, the other pressed tightly down on her ankle to hold her still. She gasped loudly, her eyes popping open and bulging wide. Her back arched slightly and she burst out into a peal of wailing giggles. Thankfully, the teasing tickling lasted but that one, brief moment and then Yurik was trailing a line of kisses up her leg. Higher and higher, his gentle hands and lightly teasing fingers leading the way. Petra was helpless to suppress the deep, shuddering moan that escaped her. She knew that she was loosing herself to her own lusts and part of her didn't care. As much as it sickened her, she wanted this. So very, very badly she wanted this. If only it were Sandro and not Yurik.

Seconds stretched into hours as Yurik inched his way every closer to her groin. Her entire body was tingling, from the crown of her head down to her toes, she was aflame. He had arrived at the apex of her legs, but rather than dive straight in for the prize as so many younger men might do, he instead bypassed it entirely, choosing rather to slowly kiss his way back down her other leg. The frustration Petra felt as Yurik's lips got further and further away was almost soul-shattering. She wanted to cry from the unfairness. His hands were now softly rubbing at her sides and stomach, fingertips barely making contact with her skin as he circled one finger around her bellybutton.

As he reached her foot, Petra was expecting him to tickle her again and braced for it, but when he instead calmly began marching his way back up her leg she relaxed back into his tender ministration. As such, she was caught completely unaware when his fingers suddenly dug into her waist, kneading at the sensitive skin just above her hipbones. Petra wailed with helpless laughter, back arching sharply until only her shoulders and heels were still making contact with the mattress. Sandro had never used ticking as a part of their foreplay and for a cyborg who was used to not feeling anything more than the briefest prickles of pain before synthetic tissue and Conditioning washed it away, this new profusion of physical sensations inundating her body and mind was unlike anything she had ever experienced before. It was at once both torturously maddening and wondrously arousing.

Petra felt her leg twitch and spasm involuntarily and there was a muffled grunt as something hard connected solidly with her knee. All at once the tickling stopped, as did the tantalizingly arousing kisses. Blinking away the confused daze, her chest heaving up and down as she fought to catch her breath, Petra eventually found the strength to lever herself up onto her elbows to see what had happened. Instantly she felt panic storming through her. Yurik was crouched back, sitting on his heels and cradling his injured face with one hand. Already she could see a livid bruise standing out across his cheekbone and he winced as his fingers made careful, hesitant contact. "I think I'll take that as a sign that you don't like being tickled," he said wryly, gazing down at her with some amounts of amusement. "You have quite the kick for such a slim girl. If fashion school does not work out for you, perhaps you might consider a career in professional football?"

"Oh my God, Yurik, I'm so sorry. I…I didn't mean to kick you I just…well…reacted. I'm…um…not used to being tickled."

"So I gather," he replied dryly. He dispelled Petra's growing fear that he might suspect something was wrong with how hard she had managed to hit him but chuckling. He shook his head, waving his free hand to pacify her concerns. "Don't worry about it, Renata. I shall simply look on this a glorious battle scar; a badge of honour that I shall wear proudly." He smiled then, lowering himself until Petra had to stare down between her breasts to meet his eye. "But if it's all the same to you I think I will refrain from deliberately seeking out any further such wounds."

The momentary break in the constant stimulation being inflicted upon her helped clear the fog from Petra's mind, allowing her to think clearly for the first time in what was surely days. Yurik's laptop seemed to glow in her eyes and she needed to find some way to distract him long enough to plug Lucretia's device into the back of it. As Yurik began to resume his work upon her body, an idea came to her; a sudden spark of inspiration exploding to life within her mind.

Reaching down with one hand, Petra pressed one fingertip to Yurik's forehead, pushing back gently to lift his face away from the base of her ribcage. She was very much aware of the feel of his fingers sliding back and forth along the crease of her legs, her thighs pulled apart just wide enough so that he could circle his thumbs around to tease the underside of her rear-end while still avoiding all contact with her crotch. "What's wrong?" he asked, blinking in confusion.

"Nothing is wrong," Petra replied in soft whisper. She gave him her best seductive smile and watched as his breath quickened noticeably. "I just thought of something to replace the tickling with, is all."

"Oh? And what would that be?"

Now Petra's seductive smile turned to one of playfully devilish, mischievousness. "You wouldn't happen to have any whip cream, do you? The kind in the can?"

A knowing smile slowly broadened across Yurik's face and he chuckled; a low, husky growl emerging from deep in his throat. He pulled back, climbing up to his feet. "I do believe I might. Don't move an inch; I'll be right back." Almost like a little kid, he scampered to the door. Stopping on the threshold, he stopped to turn back, his eyes sliding over her sweat-slicked body. A shudder seemed to pass through him and it was as if he had to physically tear himself away from the sight of her in order to finally leave.

Petra waited only until he was out of sight before springing into motion. She was on her feet and digging into her purse in a flash. Finding the flash drive, she darted over to the laptop and, fishing about for an empty USB port in the back, plugged it in. There were no flashing lights or electronic beeps to signal that the things was working, so Petra had to leave it up to faith and trust that it was doing what Lucy had said it was supposed to do. Fortune seemed to finally be smiling upon her, as Yurik's shirt had landed atop the laptop when he had discarded it. The garment provided the perfect means of concealing the flash drive, which even while plugged into the back, was still rather obvious. Arranging the shirt so that it hid the tiny device, Petra then darted back to the bed and withdrew the thumb-thick auto injector. Stuffing the plastic-wrapped syringe underneath the pillow, she clambered back onto the bed and arranged herself just as she had been before Yurik left.

She wasn't a moment too soon either, as Yurik returned only seconds later. He must have leapt down the full flight of stairs and flown back up to have made the trip so quickly. But in his hands he clutched not only a canister of whipped cream, but also a bottle of chocolate sauce and a jar of maraschino cherries. "I got down there and inspiration struck me," he said in response to her slightly wide-eyed look. "Variety is the spice of life, after all. And besides," he added, drawing himself up in a show of mock indignation. "What's the point of having whipped cream without having a cherry on top?"

Giggling gleefully, she arched her leg, waving him over with one bare foot. He happily complied. Setting canister, jar and bottle on the bedside table, Yurik climbed up next to her. Titling her face up, he kissed her passionately, tongue snaking its way inside. He reached behind him blindly to grab the bottle of chocolate sauce. Flicking up the cap, he tipped the bottle over and drizzled an ample amount down the center of Petra's body, stopping to let an extra dollop collect inside her navel. He then eagerly leaned down and began lapping it up, suckling at her skin and spreading small smears of chocolate across her chest and stomach. She giggled as he reached her bellybutton, squirming and laughing as his tongue darted into the tiny hollow and wriggled around.

"H…Hey! That's…no…f-fair," she squealed between giggles, gritting her teeth and digging her fingers into the sheets. "You…you p-promised no more t-tickling!"

"Sorry about that," he said teasingly, not a single trace of remorse present in his voice. He then went back to work, utilizing both chocolate and whipped cream in ample amounts. Petra felt as if he were turning her into his own private ice cream sundae. Fluffy white cones encapsulated her breasts, bright red cherries plunked almost comically on top. Another thick line of whipped cream ran down the length of her body, between her breasts to her navel. A trio of cherries were spaced evenly at the top of her chest, just below her sternum and at the hemline of her panties. Chocolate sauce had been liberally drizzled across the entire confection and she could feel it tickling as it slowly oozed its way down her ribs and the sides of her waist. That familiar fire was beginning to build up within her once more and Petra knew that she would have to act soon; else she ran the risk of once again becoming consumed by her own physical desires.

Starting at her waist, Yurik licked at her body, lapping up the cream and chocolate. As he came to each cherry, he took the stem in his teeth and shifted forward until the tiny red fruit dangled above her lips. Arching herself up, she parted her lips to take the cherry between her own teeth, prying it free and eating it. Sometimes he would pull back, forcing her to arch even further forward to the effort to claim the prize he proffered. Finally he reached the cherry planted just below her collarbone and Petra felt the moment was right. His head was lowered to her chest, his mind completely engrossed in the task at hand. Reaching above her, she grabbed the auto injector. If Yurik heard the click of the plastic cap popping free, then it failed to register in his mind, as he didn't so much as flinch. Not willing to wait one more second, Petra brought the tube down hard, jabbing it into his skin where shoulder met neck. She hit the plunger and heard the hiss as compressed carbon dioxide discharged the chemical payload directly into Yurik's bloodstream.

Letting out a scream that was more from shock than pain, Yurik recoiled, hurling himself off of her as his hand flew to his neck and clapped tight to the pinprick wound. His eyes were wide, disbelief and confusion paramount among the multitude of emotions visible within them. As his mind slowly caught up and processed what had just happened, realizing what she had just done to him, confusion turned to anger and he glared at her accusingly. "What…what did you…?" Already the sedatives were taking effect, his words sluggish and heavily slurred. He stumbled back, slipping and tumbling from the bed to lay splayed out on the floor. He managed to struggle up to his knees and attempted to crawl to the nightstand, no doubt where he kept a gun. With pathetic ease, even without taking her superior strength into account, Petra was able to shove him back.

The cherries capping her breasts fell to the floor as Petra wiped away the remainder of the whipped cream, climbing to her feet to stand before Yurik. Reaching out with both hands, he clawed ineffectually at her ankles, failing to make any impression upon the now focused and deadly-serious cyborg. Her face was cold and impassive, ruthless in it clinical efficiency. She picked him up under the arms and slung him up, onto the bed. His eyes rolled wildly, bloodshot and drooping. Anger and accusation still burned fiercely, but they were slowly fading into the background as his eyes filled with a deep, bitter sadness. She had betrayed him. He had reached out to claim his Goddess and just like Icarus reaching for the sun, he had been burned for his audacity and cast from the skies.

"I'm Sorry Yurik," Petra said quietly, feeling the need for some reason to say something, to offer up some explanation for her actions. "It's nothing personal; it's just my job. If it's any consolation to you, I wasn't lying when I told you I enjoyed myself tonight. I wasn't expecting to, I certainly wasn't planning to, but I really did. It's just too bad that you're a terrorist, because otherwise, I think I could have really liked you." All of this was delivered a cold, dispassionate voice. There was no trace of any emotion at all. Her face might as well have been chiselled from stone for all the expression it gave. His breathing slowed, his eyes slid closed and he slipped into unconsciousness. Petra took a moment to check his pulse to ensure that he really was only unconscious. His heart rate was slow, but steady and strong. He was asleep.

His stable condition confirmed, only then did Petra retrieve her dress. Working the material between her hands, she brought the microphone up to her mouth. Her voice came out loud and clear, the need to whisper secretively now passed. "I have secured both targets. Yurik is sedated and ready for pick up. I repeat, both targets are secure and I am awaiting extraction." Without any way for them to answer to let her know they were coming or how long they would be, Petra had to find some way to pass the time. Instantly she knew what she wanted to do.

Tossing her dress across the end of the bed, Petra padded into the attached, ensuite bathroom. Like the bedroom, Yurik's private bathroom was dripping with masculine styling. The shower was elaborately and expensively tiled in deep, earthy tones, the clear glass doors affording her a perfect view of the seven shower heads. Seven shower heads! There were two one each of the three tiled walls, set one above the other at chest and knee height. The seventh showerhead was mounted in the ceiling, arranged to send water cascading directly down upon the person standing beneath. Petra shook her head in amazement.

With the mission all-but over, the Conditioning was releasing its hold on her mind, allowing her own emotions and personality to completely reassert itself. This proved a double-edged sword; one honed to razor-sharp keenness as, without the comfortable buffer of duty and single-minded focus standing between her and her inner thoughts, all of the feelings she had shoved aside and ignored for the sake of the mission came crashing down upon her. Her knees buckled under the weight of her shame and she collapsed, sobbing piteously, to the floor. Curling up into a tight ball, knees drawn up to her chest, she sat up against the bathroom vanity and wept.

Humiliation, self-loathing and bitter rage swept through her in successive waves, scouring at her soul. How could she have allowed herself to betray Sandro like that? Not only had she allowed Yurik to touch her, to gaze upon her virtually naked body and achieve a level of intimacy with her that no-one else but Sandro was supposed to be permitted, but she had actually_ enjoyed_ it! Her body had responded to his expertly experienced hands and mouth and she had wanted more. Body and mind as one had been begging him to send her spiralling over that edge of euphoric ecstasy. Like a drug addict pining for a fix, she had craved that final, ultimate sense of physical fulfillment. If Yurik had not tickled her, had not caused her to accidentally knee him in the face, than nothing would have stopped her from being utterly consumed by lust and desire. Nothing would ever change the fact that, in that final moment before he had stopped, she had wanted him to claim her. To the depths of her soul, she had wanted to be his. He could have done anything he wanted to her body and she would have begged him for more. It was the ultimate betrayal of her feelings for Sandro. She had cheated on him not only physically, but spiritually and emotionally. For the briefest of moments, he had stopped existing for her.

Then there was the rage. How _dare_ he do this to her? This was all_ Sandro's_ fault! _He_ had sent her into this, forced her into Yurik's arms with the orders to seduce him. He _had_ to have known, had to have at least suspected that something like this might happen. She was barely nineteen years old, with the sum total of her sexual experiences confined to their stealing kisses in shadowy corners of the agency compound or in empty, unused rooms over the course of more than a year; their slow, tender make-out sessions where Sandro would caress her body lovingly but ultimately stop short, leaving her supremely frustrated and unfulfilled. It had been less than eight months since Sandro had finally broken down and agreed to take her to his bed and share with her the ultimate expression of physical love. None of that had prepared her for the animalistic fury of her own desires that Yurik had been able to unleash within her. And it was all Sandro's fault!

Uncoiling from the floor, Petra hurled herself towards the toilet as her stomach rebelled. Pain exploded inside her skull and she just barely managed to tear the seat up in time to vomit into the bowl. Again and again she heaved, even after there was nothing left to bring up. Almost her entire body was a fiery mass of pain, from her clavicle down to her groin and she groaned, fresh tears coursing down her face. Her stomach felt as it were being torn apart, the muscles of her abdomen and sides throbbing from the convulsive spasms that continued to wrack her. Black flecks floated in her vision from her inability to draw in enough air to breath properly. She had to gasp desperately between each round of vomiting and even then, her lungs were starting to burn from lack of oxygen.

Eventually though, her body calmed, the convulsion easing, the vomiting stopping. Slowly the pain began to fade, until it was just a dull throb that, while it still made her whimper and sniffle, was just barely manageable. Scrubbing the back of her hand across her face to wipe away the tears, Petra slowly clambered up to her feet. She couldn't let Sandro see her like this. It would be just too much for her to bear. It was bad enough that she had betrayed him, and she would carry that shame with her for the rest of her life, but to let him see her in this state, having him know how she was feeling and what it obviously meant…it was too much. She couldn't do that to him.

Padding over to the shower, she peeled out of her panties, which were by this point damp with sweat, saliva and, to her flame-faced mortification, certain other bodily fluids. With a dejected sigh, Petra resigned herself to the fact that she would have to burn the pair once she got back to the agency compound. There was just no way she would ever be able to wear them again without feeling utterly humiliated at her own weakness.

Climbing into the shower, she turned on the water and set it to a temperature that was just a hairsbreadth shy of scalding. She scrubbed madly at her body, desperately working to wash away the feel of Yurik's hands.

Loosing track of time, she didn't know long she spent standing under the blistering spray. She had ended up just standing there, unmoving as the water beat at her. She had adjusted the showerheads so that the six wall-mounted ones thick, pulsing jets meant to massage sore muscles. With the force of the water pressure behind them, the multitude of jet felt like physical blows raining down upon her, like thousands of tiny fists beating at her as felt she deserved.

Shutting off the water, she eventually stepped out feeling marginally refreshed. The agency's Conditioning was ironically coming to her aid once again. She knew that the tactical response teams would be arriving soon and she needed to be ready for their arrival. She fished out a large, fluffy towel from a mahogany cabinet, towelling herself dry before returning to the bedroom. Retrieving and climbing back into her dress, Petra felt for Yurik's pulse once more just to double check that he was still all right. She then silently padded down to the living room to wait.

She hadn't even fully descended the stairs before a heavy knock on the front door alerted her to the teams' presence. Sending up a tiny prayer of thanks that she wouldn't have to spent any more time in Yurik's villa than necessary, she darted to the front door and flung it open.

"Thank God you're here, Yurik is…" she broke off as her eyes focused on the black, gaping maw of a gun barrel pointed directly into her face. Shifting her eyes slightly, she picked out a second gun, further away, also pointed at her. Three men stood at the door, all of them dressed in tight-fitting black clothes. Two of the men, hard-bitten faces fixed in cold scowls, she didn't recognize. The third man, however, hanging further back from the other two, she did recognize. It was the man from the _trattoria_; the one she had spotted lurking on the edge of the patio pretending to read the newspaper! What was _he_ doing here?

"Who the fuck are you?" one of lead men barked, stepping back slightly to steady his hold on his pistol and gain some room to manoeuvre and react in case she decided to attack. "Where's Balašev?"

"I…I…" Petra stammered weakly, eyes flicking from one man to the other. What the hell was going on? Who were these men?

"I asked you a question," the man barked again, raising the pistol's barrel until it was aimed square between her eyes. At that range, Petra doubted that even her cyborg speed would have saved her a bullet to the skull. Not that there was much chance of a nine millimetre slug penetrating the CFRP lining. The second man, however, was packing what looked to her to be a SPAS-12 shotgun and with the relatively light armouring common to the second generation cyborgs, Petra was fairly confident that a burst of twelve-gauge buckshot fired from less than three feet away would prove more than capable of tearing right through her.

"Y-Yurik is…is asleep," she muttered, adopting an expression of meek submission and wide-eyed terror. "Who…who are you? W-what do you want?"

"We want you to go wake Yurik up," the third man, the man from the restaurant, snapped fiercely. "I have some business to discuss with him." With the shotgun trained on her, Petra allowed herself to be shoved back, into the entrance hall by the man with the pistol. The trio quickly stepped inside, closing and locking the door behind them. Again the man from the restaurant spoke up, pulling a pistol of his own from a holster at his waist. "Now I want to know who the hell you are and what you're doing here."

"I…I'm just…"

The second man, the one holding the shotgun, retorted sharply, his eyes never leaving hers and his hands never wavering by so much as a hair. Petra didn't know who the third man was, but the first two were obviously professionals. "Leave her alone, Antonio. Look at her: she's just some pretty little slut that Balašev picked up at the bar. Who she is isn't important. Now take us to Balašev or I'm going to have to ruin that gorgeous dress your wearing."

Swallowing nervously, Petra nodded and slowly turned her back to the men. The trio followed close behind, though she could sense that the lead man, the one with the pistol, was hanging back a few feet beyond her reach. _Yup, definitely pros._

"Check the side room," pistol-man ordered. "She might be lying about Balašev being asleep." Without a word, shotgun-man broke off to check the living room. Now was her chance, with only one of two of them behind her and both only sporting handguns that would be all-but useless against her.

Timing things out, Petra came abreast of a small side table. There was a tall, thin vase of thick, glazed ceramic atop the table, with just a single long-stemmed orchid inside. Moving faster then normal human eyes could process, Petra snapped up the vase and spun around. Her feet were still damp from her shower, providing the perfect lubrication on the tiled floor and accelerating her spin. Arm sweeping up into a horizontal chop, she brought the vase smashing into the lead man's skull. The vase shattered, spilling water all over the floor as the man began to crumple in a heap. Before his legs had more than begun to buckle, however, Petra lashed out with both hands, slamming them into the his chest and shoving him violently backwards, crashing into Antonio and spilling both men to the ground.

Shotgun-man heard the commotion and darted back into the hallway with his SPAS-12 ready. Petra was already moving and she pitched herself into a forward roll, ducking beneath the hot, vicious spray of lead that exploded from the mouth of the shotgun and tore a head-sized hole in the wall. Even encumbered by the floor-length dress, Petra managed to close the distance before shotgun-man had time to ready himself for a second shot and by the time he was, it was too late. Petra slammed her shoulder into his midriff, knocking all of the air from his lungs and causing the shotgun to drop from suddenly nerveless fingers. Snaking her arms around the man's waist she heaved up, picking him completely up off of the ground in a tackle that would have made an NFL linebacker proud. Drywall crumpled as Petra slammed him back, into the wall with bone-crunching force. The man's head rebounded off of a wooden stud, directly into the path of Petra's fist. Again the man's head rebounded off of the stud, now smeared with red and Petra slammed her other fist into the side of his skull, feeling bone shatter and buckle inwards under the force of the blow.

Focus shifting away from the corpse that slumped sideways to the ground, Petra darted back towards the other two men. Pistol-man was out cold from the vase, but Antonio was clambering unsteadily to his feet. Frantically he aimed and squeezed the trigger and Petra felt the sharp bite of the bullet that slammed into her, dead-center on her chest. It would have been an instantly killing blow had she been normal, but normal she was not and the chest cavity was the one place on her second generation cyborg body that was armoured comparably the same to her elder first-gen sisters. The shocked horror that filled Antonio's face as Petra ignored the gunshot wound and kept charging forward was supremely satisfying to her. He barely had time to register the impossibility of what he was seeing before Petra's full-armed punch took him square in the face. Bone shattered to instantaneously pulverized fragments and his face collapsed in on itself. His jaw dropped down to hang loose against his chest, shattered on both sides from the speed and force of the blow.

Her second blow caught him in the sternum, smashing in the ribcage and sending razor-sharp spears of snapped rib bones lancing deep into lungs and heart. That left him staggering, gasping for breath as his mouth filled with blood. He took one step, stumbled and then crumpled to the ground. His eyes were already glazing over in death.

Chest heaving with exertion, adrenaline surging through her veins, Petra stood there for a time just panting and staring at nothing. Then, grabbing the hidden microphone, she screamed into it angrily, "This is Petra to all response teams: where the _Hell_ are you people?"

Sandro was the first one through the door to Yurik's villa, despite the fervent protests of Giorgio and the other Tactical Response team members. Enzo and Lucretia were close on his heels, however, just ahead of the Tactical team, with Michele and Kara bringing up the rear. His handgun was drawn and held at the ready, index finger twitching from pent-up desire to shoot something. Inside, he found the aftermath of Petra's short but brutal and bloody battle with the three men. Two corpses were on the ground, blood and bits of bone splattered all across the floor and walls. A third man was slumped up against the wall; bound hand-and-foot with a thick wad of cloth stuffed into his mouth and tied in place. He was just beginning to stir, wincing at the mind-numbing headache he was undoubtedly feeling. Half-congealed blood made a fan down the side of his head and the whole left half of his face was obscured beneath a massive bruise.

Of his cyborg herself, however, there was no sign and that set a sudden pang of anxiety constricting his chest. "I swear to God Enzo, if she's hurt," he growled, kicking open a door into a formal sitting area that he rapidly swept and instantly dismissed as empty.

"Don't you try to pin this on me, Ricci," Enzo snapped back, his Benelli M4 Super 90 shotgun slung loosely across his chest, ready to be snapped up into position at a moment's notice. "How in the Hell can you expect me to have known that was going to happen? Amadeo said that he had taken care of the problem."

Behind the two men, his MP5 swivelling back and forth, Amadeo paused in his methodical sweep of the living room, drawing himself up indignantly to shout back. "Oh, so now it's _my_ fault the senile old bitch actually called the police and had us checked out? To Hell with the both of you!"

"All of you knock it off!" Michele barked in an uncustomarily harsh and commanding tone. "We've been out of contact with Petrushka for nearly an hour and we have no idea what we might be walking into. Those three might have brought friends, after all. Giorgio, take your team and secure the upper level. Amadeo, finish securing the ground floor. Sandro, you go find Petra and make sure she's all right." Everyone began splitting off to accomplish their assigned roles, Sandro nodding in silent, grim-face assent.

Moving deeper into the villa, he called out frantically, darting into the dining room and finding it empty. "Petra? Petra, where are you?"

In the kitchen, he found a heavy oaken door that had been left slightly ajar. Easing it open with the tip of one foot, he peered into the darkness at a set of stairs leading down into the basement. Making his way down the old, creaking steps, he found himself in a large, stone-walled room. Floor-to-ceiling dominated the room, every one packed full of cardboard boxes, wooden crates, glass jars and assorted random pieces of junk scattered all around. Two doors led off from the main chamber, one to utility room, the other to a wine cellar. To his eternal relief, he found Petra in the wine cellar, sitting at a small sampling bar in the corner with a glass of wine in hand. Her legs were crossed casually at the knee, one bare foot idly bobbing up and down. His eyes drank her in, savouring the welcome sight of her alive and unharmed. Well, relatively unharmed. As she turned to face him, he noticed the thick pad of folded-up paper towel taped to the center of her chest. The towelling was stained red.

"Hi Sandro!" she chirped cheerfully, her eyes unfocused and her worlds slightly slurred. Next to her on the counter, an empty bottle of red wine sat beside a second half-empty one. From the fresh look of the tears in the tinfoil wrapping, Sandro guessed that both bottles had been unopened prior to her arrival in the cellar.

Hopping off of the stool, Petra slipped and stumbled, knocking over the empty wine bottle and spilling the remaining contents of her glass. "Oops," she giggled, taking exaggerated care in righting the bottle and setting her glass down. Swaying side-to-side, she staggered over to where Sandro still stood frozen in the doorway. Halfway there, she tripped over the hem of her dress and if he hadn't jumped forward to catch her, she would planted herself face-first into the floor. "The s-stupid f-floor keeps moving on m-me," she muttered darkly, casting an angry glower at the offending tiles. She stomped down, the heel of her foot cracking and shattering the ceramic. "Ha! That'll teach you to try and trip me."

She seemed to come aware of Sandro again, as she gave a surprised start at finding herself in his arms. Her face then lit up into a broad, beauteous smile that made her eyes glow with an inner radiance. "Sandro; there you are! Oh, you have n-no idea how happy I am to…to see you." Closing her eyes, she leaned forward, her mouth seeking his hungrily. Sandro managed to shift her around enough that he was able to hold her at arm's reach. The powerful, cloying reek of alcohol on her breath was almost enough to get him intoxicated off of the vapours alone.

"Jesus Petra, are you drunk?" he exclaimed, being careful not to speak too loudly lest someone else hear them. He doubted that Jean would be happy to learn that one of the agency's cyborgs had gone and gotten herself plastered. For that matter, Chief Lorenzo and Minister Petris likely wouldn't be too pleased either. "What the Hell is wrong with you?"

"Hey!" she snapped angrily, drawing herself up to her full height and fixing him with a fierce, outraged glare. Suddenly she didn't sound or look anywhere near as drunk as she had seemed only a moment ago. There were unshed tears glistening in her eyes and her lower lip trembled slightly. "You have no idea what I had to suffer through tonight. I've _earned_ the right to a little inebriation!" Then she spoiled the moment by bursting out into giggles and slumping up against his chest. "Now come her and kiss me, you pretty, pretty man. And tell me you love me."

"Hey Sandro, did you find Petra? Is everything all right?" The sudden sound of Enzo's voice coming from the top of the stairs and drawing closer had Sandro spinning around in alarm. He couldn't let the other man find Petra like this; he had to protect her. Maybe Sandro could appeal to Enzo's feelings as a fellow handler, but he wasn't willing to risk her wellbeing on that hunch. Moreover, there was no guarantee that Enzo was alone and Sandro was almost certain that any of the TRT members would report her to Jean or Lorenzo.

Acting swiftly, he pried Petra free and gently eased her down to the floor, leaning her up against the wall. He then darted for the door, managing to get halfway across the main basement room before coming to a halt in front of Enzo. As he had suspected, a pair of TRT members were at his back, assault rifles slanted loosely across their chests. Lucretia was at Enzo's side, her own Beretta PM12 submachine gun held at the ready. Her soft blue eyes were swivelling constantly; running a continual sweep of the surrounding area despite the villa's having been secured.

"What's going on?" Sandro asked simply. His voice was calm and neutral, his face a carefully composed mask. Deception was a game that Sandro excelled at above any other and he was plying the full depth of his skills.

Enzo launched into a quick, brief overview of what had happened in the few minutes since Sandro had dashed off in search of his partner. "We found Balašev unconscious, upstairs in his bedroom. We've secured him and his laptop." His eyes darted to the open door to the wine cellar and Sandro felt a nervous prickle between his shoulder blades. "Is Petra in there?"

"Yeah, she is but…" Sandro's mouth squirmed, his eyes shifting in mild embarrassment. "Well…she's having a 'Conditioning' moment. Do think you could give us some privacy while I calm her down?"

Enzo's eyes momentarily widened in surprise and alarm, before settling into a knowing frown of understanding and shared commiseration. "Oh, I see. Yeah, no problem; I'll steer everyone away from here so you two can be alone."

"Thanks," Sandro nodded, swallowing a profound sigh of relief.

"Is Petra okay?" Lucretia asked, pausing in her constant surveillance long enough to fix Sandro with a look that spoke of sympathy and worry for her cyborg-sister.

Smiling down at the much shorter girl, Sandro nodded, giving her a faint smile. "She'll be fine, Lucy. She just needs a few moments to collect herself. Okay?" The girl nodded in mute acceptance of his reassurances, returning to her critical study of the room.

With that, the three men and one cyborg turned around and departed, leaving Sandro standing alone. He could feel beads of sweat sliding down his back and chest and his face was starting to hurt from the effort of holding it still. He quickly turned away and headed back to the wine cellar and his girl.

Petra was still on the floor where he had left her, but she had drawn her legs up and was hugging them tight to her chest. Her head was resting on her knees, shoulders shaking as she sobbed silently into the fabric of her dress. Sandro remembered seeing a coffee maker on the kitchen counter near the sink, the type that used those self-contained packets to make single-cup servings. Practically running back upstairs, he found where Balašev kept the packets and popped one in, searching around in the cupboard for a mug. It was only a few seconds before the machine groaned, hissed and spat out a stream of dark, aromatic French roast that Sandro carried back down to Petra.

Easing himself down next to her, he wrapped one arm around her shoulders and just held her. He said nothing, did nothing, just held her silently while she cried. When she was ready, she would open up. He was content to wait.

"I'm s-so s-sorry S-Sandro," Petra sniffed, not lifting her face from her knees. "I tried s-so h-hard, but it was j-just t-too much f-for me. I didn't w-want to, you've got to b-believe me, I swear I d-didn't but it just…"

"Petra stop," Sandro said, cutting her off in mid-stream. She looked up at him, her face puffy and swollen from crying. Her cheeks and chin glistened with tears and her eyes held a look of such unbridled desperation, fear and sadness that it very nearly crushed his heart inside his chest. "I don't care. I don't care what you felt or what you thought or what you did; none of it matters. The only thing that's important is that I love you and I know that you love me." He was lying through his teeth, but letting her know that would have been beyond pointless. In truth, Sandro was furious. If his suspicions were correct, and he was one of the best judges of character probably in the world, then what Balašev had done to her, made her think and feel…

Petra was silent for a long time, so long that Sandro began to wonder if she had even heard him. He was about to open his mouth and ask if she was all right when she spoke, her voice a soft whisper, barely audible. "Tell me you love me."

"I just did," Sandro replied lightly, giving her shoulders a squeeze and smiling down at her.

"Then tell me again."

Leaning in, Sandro kissed her. It wasn't a deep, passionate, forceful kiss of lust and desire, but just a gentle caress of his lips brushing up against hers ever-so-softly; a lover's kiss. "Petra, I love you. I will always love you; no matter what this horrible, filthy, disgusting job may demand of either of us." That was the pure, honest truth.

"You…you really mean that?"

"Yes."

Petra sniffed back her tears, reaching up to wipe at her face. She seemed to visibly brighten and steady herself, some of her normal bubbly exuberance taking hold once more. "Thank you Sandro. I…I really needed to hear that. Is that coffee?"

"It is. You want it?"

"Oh God, yes, please. My head is _killing_ me!" He handed her the cup, which she accepted gratefully into both hands. She took a careful, tentative sip, before proceeding to down the entire contents in four long swallows. "Oh wow, that was _so_ good," she breathed afterwards, resting the empty mug on her knees and leaning her head back against the wall. Sandro couldn't help himself and burst out laughing. After staring at him for several seconds, Petra quickly joined him and soon they were both laughing and shaking, having to hold onto one another for support.

"Hey Sandro?" she asked after their respective chuckles had died down. "Am I drunk?"

"A little bit, yes."

"I thought so," Petra replied in complete seriousness, nodding slowly. "That explains why everything looks so funny and swishy. Am I in trouble then? I don't think I'm allowed to get drunk."

"Don't worry about it; we were listening to what went on in the club and we know you had to…overindulge a bit in order to maintain your cover. We'll just say that you're still drunk from back then. Jean will probably be upset, but he's always upset. Can you walk?"

"I…I think so. Just watch out for the tiles; some of them are mean and try to trip you when you walk. I think I got one of them but I just know that there are others."

Sandro chuckled softly, helping Petra to her feet, keeping his arm wrapped around her for support. "Don't worry Petra; I'll keep an eye out for those evil tripping-tiles." They made their way out of the basement, back up into the kitchen. Slowly and carefully, they picked their way across the room. Petra kept her gaze riveted to the tiled floor, eyes narrowed suspiciously for any sign that one of the tiles was about to jump up and try to grab her by the foot and trip her.

"Hey Sandro?" she asked suddenly, once they were out into the hall.

"Hmm?"

"Now that the mission is over, do we have to head back to Rome right away?"

"Not necessarily," Sandro replied carefully, glancing sideways at her. She wasn't looking at him, instead staring far away, off into space. "There are probably a few things that will need to be taken care of and wrapped up before we pack everything up and leave. Why?"

"No reason," she said, shrugging her shoulders dismissively. "I was just wondering if we could still go back to the apartment before we left."

"Of course we can. We have to. We've both still got all of our things there that we need to pack up, remember?"

"Oh yeah, that's right." Petra's airy exclamation of dawning realization and wonder made Sandro chuckle wryly. She was _definitely_ still drunk. "I forgot. That's good then; I really wanted to go back to the apartment first."

"And why's that?"

"Why? Because I've spent the past eight hours flirting with some smelly Albanian arms dealer, who spent the past eight hours flirting with me and we were both trying to seduce each other, only I did a better job of it. Then he started kissing me and touching me and making me feel all funny, only he wasn't you and I like it when you make me feel all funny but he wasn't you so I didn't like it."

"Ah, I believe I see where this conversation is going," Sandro said. He leaned in close so that he could whisper into her ear. "Yes Petra, we can go back to the apartment and I would be delighted to make you feel as funny as you like."

"Oh good," she giggled playfully. She then turned a suddenly serious look on him, making him slow his pace and frown in concern. "There's just one thing you have to make real certain of, okay?"

"Okay, what is it?"

Petra bit her lips, shifting her eyes back and forth as if searching out secret listeners hiding in the shadows. "You have to make sure that you don't…tickle me." Sandro's jaw dropped open, sudden shock making him blurt out a strangled "what?" in incredulous confusion.

"No," she cried, eyes wide with alarm. Her expression was one of complete earnestness and grim determination. "I mean it Sandro. You have to make certain that you don't tickle me. Otherwise, I might accidentally kick you in the head. And with my strength, I could break your face."

Members of Ferro's cleaning crew glanced up in alarm at the sudden, booming sound of Sandro's surprised laughter, quickly resuming their work. Amadeo strode over to see what was going on, but the other man quickly waved him away. Sandro lowered his voice, pitching it to ensure that only Petra heard him. "Okay Petra, I'll make sure that I don't tickle you. Happy?"

"Yes!" she chirped. A sudden spring entered her step and she happily strode along beside him.

Every eye in the villa suddenly snapped towards the pair, the faces of cleaning crew and Tactical team members alike fixed in stern disgust and disapproval as Petra cried out cheerfully, "Now let's go home and have sex!"


	12. Chapter 11: Revelations

Chapter 11: Revelations

The inexorable sound of the clock ticking away filled the air with an exaggerated, almost preternatural loudness. The sharp, grating noise bounced off the inside of Jean's skull, banishing any possible thoughts of sleep. He lay on the hard, narrow bed in the cramped office suite provided to every handler for on-site accommodations. A storm of emotions churned within him, irritation, frustration and anxiety chiefly amongst them. The maelstrom ate at him from within and despite his best efforts, Jean found himself tossing and turning restlessly, unable to relax. Second to minutes, minutes ticking away to hours, he lay there and shifted, staring blankly into the darkness.

Rolling over onto his side, Jean glanced over at the clock perched atop the bedside table. The tiny hands glowed faintly, just barely visible, showing that it was just after four in the morning. He had managed to catch a scant three hours of anxiety-plagued slumber, followed by this interminable restlessness. This had not been the first night that a true, deep sleep had eluded him. Jean was finding it increasingly difficult to calm himself enough for sleep to claim him. There was just too much to do. So many things needed taking care of, things that no one else was qualified to do, that there was just no time for him to sleep.

Growling in resignation and abandoning any further pretence of rest, Jean threw off the thin blanket irritably and swung his legs over the side of the mattress. He had barely managed to bother stripping out of his suit before climbing into bed and now, fumbling around in the dark, he found where he had carelessly dropped his clothes and hurriedly donned them. Stepping into his shoes, Jean made his way out, into the hallway and towards one of the shared bathrooms, where icy-cold water splashed on face and neck helped nock free some of the cobwebs of grogginess and sharpen his focus.

The inky shroud of full darkness still blanketed the grounds outside as Jean emerged from the bathroom and trudged through the narrow hallways of Section Two's main building. Reaching into the pocket of his pants, he checked his cellphone anxiously. There was nothing to find; no new messages, no missed calls, nothing. Almost twelve hours since Elio Alboreto had called, notifying Jean that he and Costante were in position and preparing to move on their target. That had been the last Jean had heard from the man. Nervous anxiety made a burning knot in the pit of his stomach.

As a means of distracting himself from mulling over all of the potential reasons for why Elio hadn't checked in yet, Jean instead shifted his attention to a different source of irritation that had been digging at him since the previous knight. He sent up a stream of silent curses, directed at Ferro. The nerve of the woman, ordering him to bed as if he were one of the agency's cyborgs! It would hardly have been his first night spent without sleep.

Their plane landing at Ciampino Airport, just outside of Rome, around seven in the evening, Jean and Rico had immediately headed back to agency headquarters to await Elio and Costante's arrival. But as the evening wore on into night, with still no sign of the two men returning and no word of what was happening, Jean had found himself hampered by a swiftly growing sense of nervousness. In order to keep from being crushed under the weight of that anxiety, he had decided to cloister himself in the records archive, once again taking up an old pursuit. In the weeks following the training camp ambush, Jean had, with the help of his brother Guise and Ferro, spent whatever spare time he could find pouring over the archived files, seeking whatever minute piece of evidence might lead to the identity of the traitor working in their midst.

Midnight had come and gone without any word from either Elio or Costante before Ferro's arrival in the archives room. The rigidly taciturn woman had taken one look at the mess of files spread across the table before Jean and given a tiny sigh of exasperation. The argument had been fierce yet brief, culminating with Jean reluctantly agreeing to retire to his on-site apartment. And now here he was, marching back through the hallways, not five hours later. The entire affair had proven to be a colossal waste of time, just as he had known it would be. What he needed wasn't rest, it was work.

Turning into the main stairwell, Jean headed downwards, intent on returning to the basement and the records archives. It would be some hours yet before any primary agency business needed to be taken care of and with Elio and Costante still MIA, he resolved himself to spending some more time searching through the old files. As focused on that task as he was, he still paused momentarily upon catching sight of fellow handler Jacob Mehrandish heading towards the stairs from the opposite direction. The broad-shouldered, dark-skinned man strode down the hallway at a smooth, measured pace. His clean-shaven face bore a tired, slightly wearied expression that Jean was fairly sure closely mirrored in his own features.

Confused at first as to why the former Canadian soldier was up so early, the sight of the army-green rucksack slung casually over one shoulder triggered the relevant memory. He nodded to himself, recalling that the man had plans to travel up to the Swiss border for some kind of special field training.

The two men nodded to each other in greeting; an unspoken stony-faced acknowledgment of the other's presence and little more. Jean turned, matching Jacob's stride to walk along beside the other man. The sharp echoing click of Jean's patent leather dress shoes provided a counter-point cadence to the deeper thumping of Jacob's hiking boots. They walked together in this manner for a time, Jacob casting side-long glances at the slightly taller blonde man. Eventually though, Jacob's curiosity got the better of him. He barked out gruffly, mildly annoyed at having been forced to break the silence. "What do you want, Jean?"

After a short pause to consider, Jean answered in his customarily hard, flat tone. He hadn't intended to say anything, mere happenstance having brought the pair together. He had, however, been meaning to speak with Jacob at some point and now seemed the perfect time. "I promised to keep you informed if we learning anything about who might be supplying Padania with their newer weapons. Do you remember?"

Brow furrowed, one eyebrow arched slightly in confusion, Jacob was slow in his reply. Watching the other man out of the corner of his eye, gauging his reactions, Jean watched as the expression on the other man's face seemed to stiffen, his skin growing slightly ashen. Jacob's smooth pace faltered, visibly trembling slightly as he steeled himself before replying. "Of course I do. Why; what have you learned?"

Stopping on the landing between the first and second floors, Jean took several moments to carefully consider what he was about to say. He knew that he had to choose his words very carefully, taking into account the former soldier's still fragile mental state. Jacob pulled himself to a halt several feet away, turned to regard Jean with an intensely expectant look. "There is currently a mission underway in Merano, up in South Tyrol," Jean said, returning Jacob's hot gaze with an equally cold stare.

"Yeah, I know," Jacob replied sharply, anxiety lending and extra edge of his words. "Ricci and Pagani are up there grabbing an arms-dealer, right?" Jean nodded mutely in answer, watching as Jacob's face paled even further, eyes widening as realization came upon him. "You think this guy is responsible for smuggling those weapons into Italy and selling them to Padania, don't you?"

"That is what our intel suggests," Jean replied simply, not so much as a flicker disturbing the cold mask of his face. He stood there silently, watching as Jacob attempted to work enough moisture back into his mouth to speak.

"So…so this son of a bitch is responsible for…for Sophia's…getting killed?"

Jean nodded, eyebrows twitching ever-so-slightly as Jacob's face darkened into a twisted visage of vengeful rage. "Indirectly, yes; we believe so."

"Do we know who his suppliers in Germany are?"

"Not at this time, no, we don't," Jean said with a slight shake of his head. "Our contacts were unable to acquire that information. However, that knowledge is one of the things we hope to gain from interrogating Balašev."

"I see," Jacob said quietly. The shorter, burlier man went very still then, closing his eyes and taking deep, steadying breaths. Every muscle in Jacob's body appeared to be quivering with repressed emotion and Jean frowned in concern. He couldn't afford to have the man break down. The loss of a handler, not to mention the expense of re-bonding the cyborg to a new handler, would prove a significant blow against the agency. Director Draghi would have a field day if that happened, providing him with a powerful weapon in the perpetual political war between sections one and two. "And what happens when we _do_ get that information?"

Still eying the other man surreptitiously, Jean answered in a carefully neutral voice. "We will pass that information on to Europol and German law enforcement agencies…"

He got no further than that, as Jacob exploded with a burst of incredulous anger. He took a single aggressive step forward before catching himself and managed to regain some modicum of control. "You can't be serious Jean; we should be the ones who take them down."

"If the German authorities request our aid then we can sent one or two _fratelli_ to assist, but otherwise it's outside our jurisdictional purview."

"Fuck jurisdiction Jean, those assholes are _ours_!" Jacob snapped furiously. "We're a goddamned black-ops organization, for Christ's sake; legally we don't even exist. Our entire operational mandate is to leave no trace of our ever having been there so its not like the damned Krauts would know who to be pissed off at if we step on their toes, so what's the fucking problem?"

"The problem, Mehrandish," Jean growled in reply, his own expression beginning to darken in anger. "Is that once Balašev gives up the names of his customers here in Italy, we are going to have our hands full and won't have the time to be running all over Europe."

Jacob froze, his anger sinking back beneath the surface to continue its slow burn. "His customers? You mean the Padania cells he sold the weapon's to?"

"That's right," Jean said in agreement. "As well as, we believe, several small branch families of the Camorra and Ndrangheta. Those groups I have every intention of hunting down and killing with a complete and utter lack of prejudice."

A long moment passed when nothing happened, both men remaining silent. Jacob appeared to be struggling with himself somewhat, while Jean simply continued watching him. Then, a wave of emotion abruptly passed over Jacob's face, his features twisted into a mask of savage rage. Growling low in the back of his throat, he twisted suddenly, lashing out with one tightly clenched fist which slammed into the white-washed cinderblock wall with nearly bone-jarring force.

"So you'll all be out getting payback for November and I'll be stuck back here, sitting around with my fucking thumb up my ass because that little retard of mine can't pass her goddamned proficiency test."

"Unfortunately, you are correct about that. Until Melanie has achieved mission-readiness status, I can't clear either of you for combat," Jean replied after a time, once he was sure Jacob was back in control of himself. It proved a wise decision, as his words nearly tore free the mounting rage churning within the much heavier-set man.

"Then why the fuck did you bother telling me this in the first place?" Jacob barked, his voice echoing and reverberating within the stairwell, making it seem even louder than it already was. "Why the fuck tell me we're about to learn how Padania got those weapons and who else has them, knowing how badly I want vengeance for Sophia's death and knowing that I'd be stuck here doing nothing?"

Jean spent several long, hard minutes staring over at the other man. Their gazes locked together, Jean met Jacob's murderous look with one possessed of an equal amount of icy chill. Then, when he finally responded, he simply shrugged dismissively, folding his arms loosely across his chest. "Consider this information motivation then. It might be a few days before we finally break Balašev and get the information we need and even then, it will likely take us at least a week before we can confirm the intel, do our own scouting and get a mission profile drawn up. So the faster you get Melanie cleared for combat, the better your chances of fulfilling your personal vendetta."

"Great, so I've basically got maybe two weeks to turn Melanie into a nearly useless waste of space into an elite cyborg assassin. _That's_ something I'm looking forward to."

"Well that's you're problem to deal with Jacob, not mine," Jean snapped angrily, finally fed up with the man's incessant whining. "Now if all you're going to do is stand there complaining about whatever personal issues you have with your cyborg, then go schedule a meeting with Bianchi. I, however, have work to do." Jean didn't wait to see what reaction to _that_ was. He'd wasted enough time talking to him already. Leaving his fellow handler staring at his back, Jean continued down the stairs, his even, measured pace carrying him swiftly out of view.

Arriving in the archives room, Jean was only mildly surprised to find it devoid of life. Bitterly disappointed, but not surprised. Apparently, relying on his brother and Ferro to continue the search for the traitor lurking amongst them was too much to ask. Did no-one else understand that every hour, every minute spent not in fierce, dogged pursuit of the mole was another minute he had to cover his tracks and bury himself even deeper into cover. Every moment wasted not hunting him down was time for him to be sending classified information to Padania that could be used against them. Four months was already far too much time to have allowed him to hide.

Pulling down various boxes filled with files and stacking them on one of the three long tables set between the shelves of records, Jean once again took up his position and began sifting through the mountain-loads of information.

He lost track of the time he spent at the table, surrounded by field reports, expense accounts and various requisition orders. One by one he went over them all, pouring over every detail of information contained within and checking it against his notes. There had to be something, some tiny discrepancy that would lead to evidence of someone having lied about their whereabouts or what they were doing at any given moment in the past six years.

When the sounds of footsteps echoing on the concrete floor alerted him to the approach of another person, he glanced up to find that almost an hour had slipped by, completely unnoticed. "Why am I not surprised to find you down here?" Jean's brother Guise said with clear disapproval. The taller, leaner and younger Croce stood just inside the doorway, one hand still on the handle. "And where exactly would you prefer I be?" Jean snapped back, indignation flashing hot and sharp within him.

Guise folded his arms across his chest, retorting acidly while fixing his elder brother with a level glare. The black leather eyepatch over Guise's right eye made the glare appear sinister and savage. "Well considering that it's only just after five in the morning, Jean, in bed sleeping would be a good place to start."

"I did sleep," Jean retorted simply, turning his attention away from Guise. Reaching out, he grabbed another report and, opening it, began to scan through its contents. His brother, however, was not yet prepared to let the issue go. Stepping up to the table, he glared at Jean's lowered head until finally, with a frustrated growl he looked up and the pair locked gazes.

"And for exactly how long did you sleep?" Guise demanded. "An hour? Two?" The two brothers stared at each other for a time, a battle of wills playing out between them. And as often proved the case in such matters, the younger brother once more proved the victor. It was a fine balance that most would not understand, but after more than a decade spent dealing with and enduring his older brother's seemingly cold, hard demeanour, Guise had acquired a rather thick skin that made him all but immune to Jean's callous personality. It had also granted him the experience needed to cut through Jean's own emotional armouring.

"Three hours, if you _must_ know," Jean muttered at last, glancing away from his younger sibling, suddenly unable to continue meeting his hard glare.

Guise shook his head slowly, chastising his brother sternly, as if he were suddenly the elder. "Damn it Jean, you need more than a few hours of sleep every couple of nights. You're going to burn yourself out going on like this. Then where will we be?"

Jean elected not to answer what was undoubtedly meant as a rhetorical question. Instead, Jean returned his attention to the open report, muttering to himself half-under his breath. "There will be plenty of time for me to sleep after I find that _proditorio figlio di puttana_ hiding inside Section Two."

Guise threw up his hands, growling in exasperation. With a note of pained weariness, he snapped crossly, "_Madre di Dio, abbi pietà_. Are you still obsessing over that?"

"Of course I am," Jean snapped back angrily. The long-suffering patience he normally held for his brother was beginning to wear dangerously thin. Jean simply couldn't understand why Guise seemed incapable of taking such a vitally important matter such as this seriously. "What the Hell do you think I've been doing down here? As long as that traitor walks free, I willnot rest! The real question, Guise, is why you insist on badgering and harassing me when you should be _helping_ me."

Jean didn't glance up or so much as flinch as Guise's hands came slamming down on the table, his voice a sharp hiss of barely controlled anger. "I _did_ help you Jean. For four _months_ I helped you; four months we spent digging through this place looking for any piece of evidence that could lead us to this traitor. We tore this place apart and what did we find? _Nothing_."

Jean sniffed disdainfully, brushing aside Guise's complaints with a casual wave of one hand. "All that proves is that the mole knows what he's doing and has covered his tracks extremely well."

"And it never occurred to you that the far simpler explanation is that there is no mole?" Guise snapped in retort.

That final statement got through to the elder Croce. Jean went almost deathly still, a cold rage stealing over him in creeping waves. With an almost exaggerated slowness, Jean raised his head until he met Guise's heated glower. Ice met fire in a soundless explosion of clashing wills. And this time it was the younger brother who backed down. Shocked and caught off guard by the naked hatred in Jean's gaze, Guise was forced back a single, involuntary step.

"Is that what you think?" Jean asked quietly. The icy calm of his voice proved far more intimidating than if he had been shouting and raging wildly. As used to his brother's moods and behaviours as Guise was, he was forced to admit that, at that moment, he felt the tiniest stirrings of fear inside of him.

It took the younger, dark-haired man a few moments to work enough moisture back into his mouth to be able to answer Jean. Gathering his courage, Guise steeled himself for the confrontation he knew that he was starting. He had opened this door; he now had to be prepared to walk through it.

"Yes, Jean, that is exactly what I think. I think you _want_ there to be a traitor operating within Section Two, because that would give you a plausible excuse for what happened back in November. Better for there to be a traitor selling us out to Padania, rather than contemplate the idea that they might be getting better than us."

Jean seethed inside. That other people had doubts, he could accept. That other people might question him and his methods, he could deal with. But to hear such doubts and questioning from his own _brother_: that was something he found inexcusable. And while he would sooner die than admit it even to himself, that fact hurt deeply. For the past six years, Jean had counted on Guise's support to back his efforts of exacting vengeance upon the men and women responsible for their family's murder. That unwavering support was one of the central pillars that Jean had built his entire recent life upon. To suddenly learn that pillar might be crumbling beneath him was profoundly disturbing.

"No," Jean declared slowly in that same cold, quiet tone. "I refuse to believe that we were simply outsmarted by Padania. I _will not_ accept the notion that whoever they have running things for them now that Giacomo Dante is dead set a trap for us and that we blindly walked right into it."

"Why do you assume that it has to be as black-and-white as that?" Guise asked in argument. "We know that Dante set the president by recruiting foreign mercenaries to fight for him last year and that Padania's leadership council has been following that example ever since. It's entirely possible that the skill and experience of this newest batch of mercenaries gave Padania an edge that we simply underestimated."

Jean frowned, throwing Guise a sceptical glare that made it blatantly obvious how he felt about such a possibility. "And it was pure coincidence that both Triela and Sophia were taken down by weapons perfectly suited for countering cyborg armour? They were waiting for us Guise; with weapons hand-picked to kill our cyborgs."

Guise growled, frustrated with what he saw as his brother's relentless obstinacy. "That's because Dante told them how to counter the girls' armouring. He somehow figured out what they were and he spread the word. That's how Beatrice got killed in Venice, that's how Triela damn-near almost got killed in Turin and…"

"Alright, alright, fine!" Jean barked, interrupting Guise's tirade. "I'll concede to the fact that Dante gave Padania the prior knowledge they needed to be equipped to handle our girls, but that still does not explain how they were perfectly positioned and prepared to ambush us. They knew we were coming and that _is_ evidence of a traitor."

Guise sighed, exasperated, scrubbing one hand down his face. "Okay, I'll admit that there might, _might_, be a mole inside the agency, feeding information to Padania. It wouldn't be the first time _that_ has happened. But there is just no evidence to support the idea that the mole is within Section Two itself and I abjectly _refuse_ to believe that it could be a fellow handler!"

"Why?" Jean countered, now with his own hands pressed firmly to the table, standing half out of his seat in order to meet Guise's gaze more levelly. "It wouldn't be the first time _that_ has happened either, remember? Not only did Ernesto turn out to be a spy, but he managed to turn Pia against us as well."

"Yes and after we managed to track them down and kill them both, we completely overhauled our entire handler screening process to ensure such a thing never happened again. You and I both personally oversaw the rescreening of ever single member of Section Two's staff, including all of the handlers."

On and on the battle raged, each man arguing their respective stances with grim resolve and fierce vehemence. Anger and frustration mounted within both brothers as neither proved willing to budge an inch. Guise's arguments, sound as they were, failed to sway Jean's opinion on the matter. Likewise, nothing Jean could say would convince Guise that there was any validity to his suspicions. It was a cyclical fight that both men quickly realized was going nowhere, with no hope for a mutual resolution.

Finally, Guise gave up. Realizing that there would be no getting through Jean's stubborn blindness to reason, he resigned himself to the only course of action left to him that had any chance of success whatsoever. With his face firmed into a stony mask, he jerked one of the chairs back sharply and sat down.

"What are you doing?" Jean asked, caught off guard by this sudden change in behaviour.

"If you won't listen to reason, then I might as well help," the younger Croce snapped, glaring across the table.

"Why? You don't believe there's anything to find in these old files."

"That's right, I don't," Guise agreed, nodding slowly. "But if I have to help you go through every single piece of paper in these archives in order to prove that to you, once and for all, then so be it. Now hand me that expense report for the second quarter of oh-three."

Jean sat back in stunned silence, not quite able to believe what was happening. He could only stare dumbly across the table at his brother, who stared back with one hand outstretched expectantly. A wry chuckle broke through then, cracking the cold façade. He shook his head amazedly, sighing softly as he passed over the file. "Whatever works, I suppose."

Together the two brothers set to work, reading through file after file, report after report. Minutes slipped by; one hour, two, all spent in near-complete silence. Neither wanted to break the tenuous peace that had settled by speaking any more words than were necessary. Something began to niggle at Jean after a while though. Several times he glanced up to see Guise looking over at him, concern written all over the man's face.

Finally, just after two hours into their work, Jean could take it no more and spoke up, snapping, "What is it?"

"You still haven't heard anything from Elio or Costante, have you?" Guise replied quietly, flipping the pages of an after-action report from a four year old mission.

Blinking in confusion, Jean sat up slightly, wondering what had brought on the unexpected comment. "No, I haven't. How did you know?"

"Because that's about the twentieth time in the past hour that you've checked your phone for new messages," Guise replied dryly.

"Is it?"

"Yes, it is." Guise fell silent for a brief moment, a pensive look overcoming him. "How long have you been out of contact?"

"Fourteen hours," Jean replied, glancing at his watch first to check the time. "Elio called yesterday afternoon to say that he and Costante were in position. It should have taken them no more than four hours to finish the mission and make the drive back here to headquarters. Damn it all, where are they?" That last came out as a fierce growl, his balled fists slamming down on the table with an echoing _bang_.

"Maybe it's time you took a break," Guise suggested cautiously. "I don't suppose you happened to stop for breakfast before coming down here, did you?" When Jean had collected himself enough to reply, giving just a curt shake of his head, Guise nodded resolutely and waved his brother toward the door. "Then go get something to eat; and maybe a cup of coffee. I'll stay here and keep working. Agreed?"

"Very well," Jean muttered crossly. Grumbling to himself, but unable to find any particularly valid reason to argue against Guise's suggestion, which was admittedly quite sensible, Jean rose slowly and headed towards the door.

Returning to the ground floor, Jean stalked through the corridors of the Agency's main building. Early morning sunlight was beginning to filter through the windows, and the halls were starting to bustle as the dayshift crew arrived and set about their daily duties. There was a sporadic buzz of conversation that filled the air as Jean passed by clusters of analysts, intelligence agents, tactical team members and other support staff. Already the sounds of telephones, tax machines and computer printers could be heard coming from the various private offices and more public work rooms.

Rather than make the cross-compound trek to the full-service cafeteria in the cyborgs' dormitory building for breakfast, Jean instead opted for the simpler and faster option and made his way to the much smaller canteen, located within the main building itself, that primarily served the support staff. It lacked the kitchen and freshly-cooked food of the cafeteria, but the various coolers and glass-fronted refrigerators stocked a wide variety of packaged foods and bottled beverages.

Much as he had expected, the canteen bore its fair share of patrons, making the relatively small room feel genuinely crowded. Every one of the dozen or so tables had at least one occupant and the steady stream of men and women heading in or out filled much of the remaining limited floor space. Jean only had a brief moment to take all of that in however, as he stopped just inside the door, managing no more than three or four steps before coming to a dead stop. Through the crowd, giving off the impression of being a swan amongst mallards, her straight-backed poise and coldly impassive face giving off waves of haughty disdain, was one of the very last people in the world he ever thought to see.

Jean stomped forward, creating small, swirling eddies in the crowd. The clusters of people, seeing him and taking immediate notice of the naked rage burning in his eyes, stepped back hurriedly so that he walked in the middle of a small clear space that moved with him. In only moments he reached the young woman and, gripping her tightly by the upper arm, pulled her over to one side and fixed her with a savage glare that would have melted stone.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Jean hissed venomously. He was conscious of people nearby glancing over, avid wonder and curiosity apparent on their faces.

"I'm getting Costante and myself something to eat," Nina replied flatly, eyeing Jean up and down with a clear look of critical condescension in her pale green eyes. "We had a long night and we are both rather hungry. I assure you that I have his permission to be here, if that is the issue."

"The issue Nina," Jean cut himself off abruptly, realizing that he was shouting. Modulating his tone took monumental effort, but he brought his voice back under control and made a second attempt. "The issue is that it has been over fourteen hours since I last heard from either Costante or Elio. Now when did you get back?"

Shifting the plastic tray loaded down with food to one hand so that she could check her watch, Nina answered in a distinctly bored tone. "A little over three hours ago. Why?"

_Three hours ago,_ Jean thought to himself, growling silently. Three hours ago he had been in bed, vainly trying to sleep. So why had neither handler called him? "Who did you check in with?" Jean barked, ignoring Nina's own question.

"How should I know? I was busy unloading the van. It was probably Ferro or somebody; wasn't she supposed to be on duty last night?"

"Ferro. I see." Jean's eyes narrowed suspiciously, his mind beginning to piece things together. Damn that woman! The presumption of being able to order him about was one thing, but the withholding of vital information was a gross overstepping of her authority. Where the Hell did she get off, keeping news of Costante and Elio's return from him?

"Where is Elio?"

Nina rolled her eyes ostentatiously, making an odd noise in the back of her throat, half-way between a sigh and a snort. Her voice, when she finally deigned to answer, was steeped heavily in flippant scorn. "I think I heard him tell Costante he was going to bed, so he is probably in his apartment. Now unless you have any more questions, sir, I would like to get back to Costante before one of us starves to death."

It was a measure of Jean's preoccupation, that he didn't call the girl down for her impertinent attitude; or even so much as really take notice of it. He barely even noticed as she walked away, gliding from the canteen surrounded by her own tiny bubble of clear space. Jean was too busy seething inside, half-blind with rage to notice much of anything around him. Before he even knew what was happened, he was moving. Back through the hallways and up flights of stairs to the fourth floor of the main building.

The second floor that was devoted exclusively to the handlers, the floors were covered by thin, high-traffic carpets of light brown, the walls painted a neutral beige. Clamshell sconces provided a softly subdued illumination that made the brass handles and nameplates mounted beside each door gleam faintly.

Stepping up to the door to Elio's suite, Jean knocked forcefully on the thick wood. The heavy thumping echoed faintly down the hall, the door rattling in its frame. He never spared a thought to the notion that the older man might already have been asleep, or that anyone else nearby might also be sleeping. A second round of incessant knocking followed quickly on the heels of the first, Jean pausing for only a scant handful of seconds before impatience drove him to try again. The muscles in his jaw worked beneath his skin as he waited, giving a slow count of ten before his fist once again slammed against the polished oaken barricade.

After the fourth time banging against the door, Jean finally heard the telltale metallic click of a deadbolt being retracted, could hear the sound of muffled grumbling coming from within the room. "I swear to God, if we aren't under attack by Padania and they aren't on the verge of overrunning us, then someone is going to get a bloody bullet to the head." A moment later the door swung inwards several inches, revealing a gruff, weathered face. The oldest of the agency's handlers by at least a decade, Elio Alboreto was an imposing man who gave off the immediate impression of being hard and unyielding, even while half-asleep as he currently was. Steel-grey hair and beard, both cut short, lent him a look of grim intensity. While only slightly above average height and with a mid-life spread adding some modest padding around the waist, the sheer intensity of the man's presence nevertheless made him an intimidating sight. None of which phased Jean in the slightest.

A sharp, venomous rebuke on the tip of his tongue, ready to launch forth, Elio instead gave a deep grunt of surprise at the sight of Jean standing framed in the half-open doorway. The much older man blinked, sighing wearily while scrubbing one hand down his lined face. "Oh, it's you. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised but to be honest I _was_ hoping for a couple more hours of sleep first."

"Where the Hell have you been?" Jean growled, barely able to suppress his impatience long enough to allow Elio to finish speaking.

Frowning slightly, Elio poked his head out briefly to cast an appraising look up and down the hall before withdrawing back inside. He then stood back from the door, waving Jean into the room, saying, "Before you go throwing a temper tantrum lad, why don't you come inside? I'm sure there are a few blokes who would appreciate not having to listen to us jump down each others' throats, eh?" Tight-lipped with anger and deciding to hold his peace for the moment, Jean gave a curt nod of acceptance before striding into the anteroom of Elio's suite.

Jean's control over himself held only long enough for Elio to shut the door behind them. He stood in the center of the room, glaring hotly at the other man's back, fists clenched tightly at his sides. As soon as it clicked shut, he exploded. "It's been _fourteen_ hours since I last heard from you Elio; fourteen _hours_! Where in God's name have you been?"

"We ran into a bit of a…complication down in Bari. A bunch of thick-headed punks decided to rob a house less than two blocks away but neglected to make sure that the family was away first; turns out they weren't." Sniffing disdainfully at the disgraceful lack of preplanning, Elio shook his head in disgust. "To make a long story short, the police arrived, the bloody twits took the family hostage and the whole damned neighbourhood ended up on full lockdown. We were left stuck having to wait the whole thing out and that didn't end until about five hours ago."

"Then why the hell didn't you call to update me on the situation?" Jean demanded, some of the apprehension he had had bottled up inside since the previous night slowly beginning to leach away. He could feel the knots in his shoulders also beginning to loosen.

"Couldn't risk the noise," Elio replied, folding his arms across his chest and shaking his head slowly. "One of the would-be burglars managed to escape as the police were arriving, so there were officers all over the place canvassing the area."

Pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, Jean growled quietly in mildly irritated frustration. "Alright fine, but that still doesn't explain why you didn't call as soon as you were able to extricate yourselves and started heading back."

Jean watched as Elio's face fell into an expression of bewildered puzzlement. Eyes narrowed, brow furrowed, he stood studying Jean for several long, silent moments before answering. "We _did_ call, Jean. As soon as we were on the road and heading back here. We checked in with Ferro and she said that everything was fine. Did she not pass the message along?"

The oh-so-tiny, delicately budding sense of relief that had been slowly growing within Jean instantly flashed to sudden indignation and anger at Elio's words, burning away as fury swept through him. _Again_ it came back to Ferro. Not only did she feel the need to act like some form of surrogate mother, which Jean most certainly did _not_ need, but know she was taking upon herself to withhold vital information from him? How _dare_ she?

"Oh bollocks; she didn't, did she?" Elio breathed after a minute or so, when Jean failed to respond, instead merely staring, unseeing, at a spot on the floor half-way between them. "Listen Jean, I'm sure Ferro had her reasons for not telling you."

"Oh I don't doubt that in the slightest," Jean replied darkly, shaking himself out of his temporary fugue. "But never mind her. The mission: you were successful?" Setting aside his anger for the moment, there would be time to deal with Ferro's impudence later, Jean set himself to focus on the more important matter of receiving Elio's report.

The elder man barked a dry, almost scornful laugh, crossing the room to where a low, cherry-wood liquor cabinet sat pushed up against one wall. "Oh it's done lad, no need to worry about that. Aside from the delay, we were able to take care of things just fine." Taking out a half-empty bottle and a pair of glasses, Elio pouring himself an ample amount of what looked to Jean to be single-malt Scotch, fifteen years old judging from the bottle's label. "Care for a belt?" Elio offered, indicating the bottle. "You look like you could use it."

"Thank you, but no," Jean replied stiffly. Elio might be ready to go back to bed as soon as their conversation was over, but Jean's day was just beginning and the last thing he wanted was a head full of alcohol.

"Suit yourself. Anyway, it's not as if it was a particularly difficult mission anyway; just your basic "snatch and grab" and it went completely by the book." The strong hint of bitterness lurking within the older man's voice surprised Jean and he looked slightly askance at his fellow handler. It was unlike the old man to display any kind of problem with the questionable morals of their work. That he might have those problems was expected; but openly showing them to the man who was his direct superior was completely unexpected.

Blaming the slip on simple tiredness, Jean let it slide. Instead he pressed on with what he had originally intended to say. "I trust you gave strict instructions to your cyborg not to discuss this mission with anyone?"

Again, Jean was caught off-guard by Elio's reaction. This time however, the source of that surprise was in a deep, sardonic chuckle. Smiling grimly, Elio turned back towards Jean, leaning one elbow on the edge of the cabinet. "I wouldn't worry about Marisa flapping her gums on this one, Jean. Even _she_ can keep a secret when she doesn't know about it to begin with."

Brow furrowing in confusion, Jean threw the man a questioning look. "I beg your pardon?"

"Marisa should still be asleep in bed Jean; or maybe just getting up for breakfast. Although," he added, grumbling to himself now. "This _is_ Marisa we're talking about, after all, so there's a strong chance she used my absence as an opportunity to stay up all night partying with the older girls or some such. 'When the cat's away', right?"

"So wait; are you tell me that you left your cyborg behind?" Jean exclaimed incredulously.

"You're damned right I left her behind," Elio snapped, suddenly angry. "If you honestly thought for one second that I would involve her in…in _this_, then you're out of your bloody mind." Elio's mouth twisted sourly at the end, as if he had just bitten into something unpleasant. "Marisa's about the only good thing left in my life. I'll not have her hands soiled by this kind of work. Not this."

"You didn't seem to have a problem with the mission details when I handed them to you last night," Jean pointed out coldly.

"I didn't," Elio agreed, nodding slowly. "I told you yesterday that I understood the necessity of the mission and _that_ hasn't changed. But I'll be damned before I willing destroy this one fragment of her innocence."

Jean scoffed at Elio's last comment, barking a harsh, cynical laugh. "And if you honestly think that either one of us still has a soul to be damned Elio, then you're the one who's out of his mind."

Elio smirked knowingly, meeting Jean's level gaze with a hard look of his own. "Oh aye, I've no doubt that you're right about that one Jean. But it doesn't change my opinions on the matter."

Jean frowned, folding his arms across his chest. "I fail to see what you're worried about Elio. She's a cyborg; she's programmed not to care about what she does on the job."

"What I'm worried about is her starting to actually _like_ the things she does on the job. I already have a hard enough time reigning in her wilder impulses. You _do_ remember the bloody finger she gave Pieri as a trophy when we first arrived?" Jean nodded, having been told later about how, grinning as broadly as a kid on Christmas, Marisa had proudly brandished the heavy gold ring belonging to a murdered intelligence officer. The ring had still been attached to the severed finger of the man who had killed him.

The entire incident, as Jean had eventually found out, had been intended as a test, to see if Marisa could behave in a dignified, professional manner. Needless-to-say, she had failed miserably. Particularly when, after being informed that she would be allowed to keep neither ring nor finger as a souvenir, she had almost thrown a temper-tantrum.

"Besides Jean," Elio continued, his voice taking on a quiet intensity. "You didn't see the look in Nina's eyes tonight. She clearly enjoyed what we were doing and her Conditioning had _nothing_ to do with it. I swear: she was practically salivating over the thought of getting her knives wet. The pleasure and anticipation she displayed: it…it was almost…sexual."

Jean fidgeted awkwardly, the uneasy silence stretching out. In the end he decided to just dismiss the matter entirely. How Elio chose to deal with his cyborg was his business after all and was ultimately irrelevant. "Well as long as the job got done, that's fine. Now if you'll excuse me Elio, I believe that it is beyond time that I spoke with Ferro. I'll let you go back to sleep; you likely need your rest after last night." The very thought of the woman set Jean's blood to a slow boil and he felt himself beginning to quiver once again with tightly repressed anger. He turned to leave, his hand on the polished brass handle when Elio spoke up from behind, pulling him up short.

"You look like you could use some rest yourself, lad."

"I did rest," Jean replied tersely. Damn it, did _everyone_ in Section Two think it their duty to act as if they were his mother?

Elio chuckled wryly, taking a sip from his thick glass tumbler as he replied. "Well in that case, you look like you could use some more."

His patience wearing thin, Jean snapped back somewhat harsher then he intended, "I will take that under advisement. Now if you'll excuse me Elio, I have a considerable amount of work waiting for me. I will see you later."

The door was clicking shut even as Elio opened his mouth to offer a reply. Jean's abrupt departure left Elio standing with his mouth hanging open, the words dead on his tongue. Closing his mouth, he swallowed what he had been about to say and sighed wearily. "That man is going to drive himself straight into the ground if he keeps this up."

Stalking down the corridor, Jean swept back into the stairwell. His heavy, forceful footfalls set clattering echoes reverberating through the entire shaft. Angry, venomous thoughts of what he would say to Ferro when he confronted her spun through Jean's mind in a dizzying storm of indignant anger. It was too much. Ferro's insolence the night before, sending him to bed like some recalcitrant child, his brother's open doubt earlier in the morning and now this; they built upon one another, forcing Jean to the very limits of his patience and iron self-control.

On the building's ground floor, Jean strode purposefully through the wide hallways towards Section Two's main data analysis office. With any luck, he hoped to find Ferro there. If not, then he should at least be able to find someone who could direct him towards her.

Like virtually every other office space in the world, the large room Jean stepped into was split up into numerous cubicles and work stations by modular office dividers. He gazed out across the swarming clusters of people; their frantic, frenzied movements the picture of controlled chaos. There was a droning buzz of conversation that permeated from one end of the room to the other. Ringing telephones, beeping fax machines and humming photocopiers each added their own sounds to the ambient cacophony.

When several minutes of quick searching about the room failed to yield the elusive female field agent and department chief, Jean resigned himself to the fact that he would have to ask for help. Turning aside, he flagged down an analyst who looked only slightly less busy than all the others around him. When the man in question saw Jean approaching, he gave a small start of alarm and glanced about hurriedly, as if searching for an avenue of escape.

His face set in a fierce glower, undoubtedly the reason for the analyst's nervous apprehension, Jean barked a question at the man, who flinched slightly at the sound. "You; where is Agent Milani?"

"S…Sir?" the man stammered weakly, put off-balance by Jean's severe intensity and harsh gruffness.

Realizing that if he made the man soil himself that he would only waste more time tracking down and cornering someone else, Jean modulated his tone. He explained to the analyst in a voice that was markedly slower and softer, if no less tight from anger. "I am looking for Agent Milani; where is she?"

"Miss Ferro? Ah, she…she isn't here sir; she hasn't been in here for a while," the man replied, the relief he felt at not being the primary focus of Jean's attention clearly evident on his face. "I'm pretty sure she's been over in the medical building most of the morning."

"The medical wing?" Jean exclaimed, taken slightly aback with surprise. "For what purpose?" He was mystified over why she would be up there. Outside of the medical staff themselves, the only people who went of to that side of the compound were the handlers. And their cyborgs, of course. Even as he gave voice to the question though, something clicked inside of Jean's head and a dawning realization swept over him.

"I'm sorry sir, but I'm afraid I wouldn't know. I'm just a translator." The man spoke in a somewhat sheepish, apologetic tone, as if worried that Section Two's notoriously strict and overbearing field commander would consider the man's inability to answer as a personal failure.

He needn't have worried however, as Jean's attention had moved beyond the skittish data analyst, having completely forgotten the wiry man. He mentally berated himself savagely, angered and disappointed by what he perceived as his own ineptitude. With everything that had happened this morning, the stress of not knowing the status of Elio and Costante's mission, it had completely slipped Jean's mind that Sandro, Michele and Enzo should be on their way back with a secured Balašev. Of course Ferro would be over in the medical wing; that's where the interrogation was to take place. She would be over there overseeing things to ensure that everything was prepared for the Albanian's arrival.

The early morning air still carried the damp chill of a winter that was not long gone. The heavy cloud-cover that had blanketed the sky the past few days was breaking up and thinning though, promising a warmer turn in the weather. The sunlight spilling down over the nearby mountains cast the agency grounds in a faintly golden tint, the dewdrops sparkling like an endless field of diamonds strewn about the grass and shrubs.

Jean barely felt the chill touch him, his haste to cross the distance from the main building to the medical wing adding the warmth of physical exertion to the already considerable warmth of bottled anger, resentment, frustration, irritation and indignation. His face was a thunderhead to rival the storm clouds of recent days and the few agency personnel sharing the bricked walkways with him took one look at his glowering expression and wisely chose to remain silent. Some, who were also heading towards the medical wing, decided that their business could wait and promptly peeled away and headed elsewhere.

Inside, the blocky four-story building appeared identical to most any other hospital in the world, with its linoleum flooring, whitewashed walls and the almost overwhelmingly cloying scent of antiseptic. Nurses in pastel pink and blue scrubs walked the corridors carrying out their proscribed rounds, research technicians in their crisp white coats strode along, wrapped up in their own self-important attitudes. Jean saw Doctor Belisario at the far end of one crossing corridor, engaged in casual conversation with Doctor Giliani.

"Signor Croce, Signor Croce!"

A deeply melodious voice calling out sharply caught Jean's attention and turning aside slightly, he saw a middle-aged woman of average height waving him over to a nurse's station. The woman's iron-gray hair was cut in a short bob reminiscent of Henrietta's own hairstyle. Where Henrietta's light brown hair served to accent her sweet, innocent features, on this much older woman it only highlighted the stern hardness of her face. In fact, the word "hard" was a very apt description of the woman, whose entire body seemed to have been hewn from a solid block of granite. The short sleeves of her pink scrubs revealed arms almost as big around as Jean's own and very nearly as firm.

"I have a message for you from Signorina Milani," the woman said when Jean walked over, a small scrap of paper held in one thick-fingered hand. "She said to tell you that you can find her down in autopsy room three."

"Oh, I see. Thank you," Jean replied stiffly, turning sharply on his heel and resuming his determined march along the corridor. Finally he had a concrete goal to focus on, with Ferro waiting for him at the end. He was already rehearsing in his mind the lecturing tirade he planned to deliver, could already see the coldly impassive woman shrinking back in contrition and shame.

The autopsy rooms were four modest-sized chambers in the basement of the medical building. Because of the nature of the Social Welfare Agency's work – and the nature of the cyborgs themselves – the rooms were not used overly often. Cyborgs killed in battle were simply taken to an operating room and dismantled, their technological parts harvested to be recycled into a new unit. Occasionally when an intelligence agent from Section One was killed while out in the field, their body was brought back to be autopsied, rather then being sent to a public hospital.

At the moment though, the third of the four autopsy rooms was in the process of being transformed. A swarm of technicians were flitting about both inside and outside, working to install various pieces of equipment that would be needed for the anticipated interrogation. Several technicians were busy removing the normal swinging doors, replacing them with heavier, airtight steel ones. Inside, more workers were up on ladders insulating the air ducts to prevent sound from vibrating up them and spreading to other parts of the building. There were wires strewn about the floor as several surveillance cameras were mounted into the corners of the room. A nearby storage room had been cleared out in advance and Jean saw monitoring equipment being wheeling in to be set up.

Sweeping his gaze across the busy room, Jean immediately picked out Ferro, who had already taken notice of his arrival and was striding purposefully towards him. Before he had time to so much as open his mouth, intent on delivering a scathing rebuke, Ferro thrust a manila folder into his hands and began rattling off information. "We received a call from Michele at approximately three-thirty this morning, informing us that Yurik Balašev had successfully been taken into custody. He informed us that they were proceeding with standard teardown procedures and would soon be heading back to Rome. He called again two hours ago to say that he and Kara, along with one tactical team, were preparing to board a transport helicopter, with Balašev. They should be landing at Pratica di Mare within the next fifteen minutes so I expect them to be back here in roughly an hour and a half."

Of medium height and a slim build, the woman gazed at Jean with slightly hooded, deep grey eyes; eyes that hid an intellect honed to a razor's edge. Those seemingly cold, impassive eyes stared out from a heart-shaped face that would have been considered beautiful, if not for the cold, expressionless mask that was all but permanently fixed in place. Black hair cut close to her scalp would have made her seem almost boyish if not for the gentle curves that were tastefully accentuated by the finely-tailored black business suit with knee-length pencil skirt she wore. Black leather pumps gave her a few extra inches of height, though anyone who had dealt closely with her would admit to her not needing it. Even being a full head shorter than some of the handlers and other support staff members, Ferro Milani, department head of Section Two's support division, was a woman capable of a kind of cold intensity that could make even the tallest and burliest of men feel as if they were a six-year-old child; and one who had just tracked mud all over their mother's impeccably clean carpets, no less.

Several times during Ferro's rapid-fire speech, Jean tried to give voice to the vicious and scathing rebuke hovering on the tip of his tongue, but she simply rode over him and went on talking. Finally Jean was forced to settle for a furious glower and hope that the woman took the hint and stopped. His open anger washed over Ferro and slid harmlessly past her. If she felt at all intimidated by Jean's displeasure being aimed directly at her, she gave no sign of it whatsoever. Not so much as a surprised flutter of an eyelid disturbed her calm demeanour.

Eventually the flow of words from Ferro did slow and Jean immediately jumped in before she had time to gather herself and start again. He demanded hotly, "Why wasn't I informed that Elio and Costante had returned?"

"Because you were asleep," Ferro replied calmly, a slight arch to her eyebrows giving her a look suggesting that it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Then you should have woken me," Jean hissed fiercely. Several support staff members turned towards the pair, curious. Upon seeing Jean's face, however, they immediately turned back to their own work. No-one wanted to be caught in the middle of a battle of wills between Section Two's field commander and tactical support department chief.

"I decided that you needed the rest more than you needed to be immediately informed of their return. Elio explained to me the reasons for their delay and lack of communications and it wasn't important enough information to bother you with. They were able to complete the mission and that was all that mattered. You could be filled in on what had happened in the morning. Now with all due respect sir, I have a few preliminary mission profiles for you to review. I was hoping to get through them before Michele's arrival with Balašev."

Jean had to resist the powerful urge to take a step back in the face of Ferro's cold and stinging rebuke. He was torn between the competing urges to chew her out for deliberately withholding important mission information and praise her exceptional organizational abilities.

"Vey well," Jean grumbled, realizing that any effort to brow-beat the woman into line would be utterly wasted. "But next time I expect to be notified _immediately_ when such calls come in. Is that understood?"

"Of course sir," Ferro replied blandly, the expressionless mask of her face making it perfectly clear that she would continue to do what _she_ thought was best; for both him and the agency, regardless of whatever orders Jean gave to the contrary.

Muttering to himself, Jean spent the next several minutes quickly leafing through the detailed mission profile that Ferro had handed him. There was nothing particularly special or important about any of them. Two were run-of-the-mill smash-and-grab style missions to apprehend a suspected ranking Padania member, one a minor assault against a suspected bombing cell, while the fourth was a simple political escort job. And while there were several points where Jean offered his advice on corrections or minor alterations to what was presented in the files, the truth was that the mission profiles were all remarkably well put together and fleshed out. That level of detailed completion spoke volumes of the efficient efficacy of Ferro's people. But then, Ferro was a leader who demanded absolute excellence from her people and after all this time, Jean shouldn't be surprised at how well the men and women under her command worked to rise to the task and meet her expectations.

Each time Jean mentioned something Ferro simply nodded and took mental note of the changes. She was also quick to point out where his suggestion might not work, or what was already in the file was in some way better. Over the almost eight years they had been working together at the agency, Jean had come to respect Ferro's opinion on operational matters and wisely took her advice where it differed from his own.

When they had finished going over the mission profiles, Ferro accepted the files back from Jean and, calling over a female support member, promptly handed it off to her, listing off all of the changes and giving the woman instructions to implement them and retype all of the files. The woman nodded simply and rushed off to comply. Review of the files had only taken ten to fifteen minutes to complete and, glancing at his watch, Jean estimated that there was still a good forty minutes left before Michele arrived with Balašev. He was contemplating a return to the records archives when his stomach gave a loud, gurgling rumble of protest. In the excitement and emotional turmoil stirred up by finding Nina in the canteen, it had completely slipped his mind that he still hadn't eaten breakfast.

Ferro stared at him blankly, her face betraying nothing as to what she was thinking or feeling. Nevertheless, Jean felt himself colouring faintly as if she had fixed him with a disapproving glower. Clearing his throat and mustering up as much dignity as was left to him, Jean calmly informed her that if anyone needed him that he would be over in the main cafeteria. He just knew that it was going to be a long, stressful day and he would need the added energy of a full meal. With any luck, by the day's end, Ferro's people would have at least two more mission profiles to throw together.


	13. Chapter 12: Screams of the Innocent

Chapter 12: Screams of the Innocent

Nina frowned thoughtfully as she watched the scene unfolding on the grainy colour monitor. Her skilled, critical eye watched carefully, taking in every detail. She had put a considerable amount of painstaking effort into formulating this plan and she wanted to make absolutely certain that all of that time wasn't ruined due to the fumbling incompetence of rank amateurs. Not that either of the two heavily-muscled men she was watching were amateurs. They were both skilled field agents, possessing their fair share of experience in this kind of work. But neither of them had the level of subtlety nor the finesse that Nina herself had; something that she prided herself in.

Another muffled scream came filtering through the speakers, the third man in the room arching his back sharply as the jumper cable came into forceful contact with his side. The low-quality video feed prevented her from making it out, but Nina knew from past experimentation that Balašev's teeth would be making deep indentations in the rubber bar wedged into his mouth as his jaws clamped shut convulsively.

Balašev's greying hair was matted to his skull from a combination of blood and sweat. Numerous blows to the face had left it a ruined, pulpy mess. His upper body was drenched in sweat and tiny rivulets of blood, new and old, streamed down his chest and arms, staining the silk of his boxers, the only piece of clothing left to him. Massive, overlapping bruises had left his ribs and sides tinted a deep purple and lurid yellow. Leather cuffs, suspended from a chain attached to the ceiling, held his hands over his head. Nina could see the muscles in Balašev's arms straining as his knees buckled, placing all of his weight on his wrists.

As soon as Balašev collapsed, the man holding the jumper cable pulled back, breaking the contact. The other man then stepped up and, taking hold of Balašev's hair, wrenched his head back until the two could stare each other in the eye. Their faces only inches apart, the grim-faced agent calmly reached around to unbuckle the gag, removing it from between Balašev's teeth. He waited only long enough for the man to take one deep, shuddering breath before launching into the questions, his voice pitched to a low, menacing growl. Almost immediately though, Balašev began to laugh; a deep, rumbling chuckle that worked its way up from his core and set his entire body to trembling. Frowning, the agent took a step back, receiving a thick glob of bloody phlegm square in the face as Balašev spat at him.

Cursing foully, the agent let Balašev's head slump back down, wiping the red-streaked spittle from his face. Then, pausing a moment to gather himself, he lashed out viciously, fist slamming deep into Balašev's stomach, causing him to curl inward as far as the bindings would allow, retching up onto the floor.

"This is taking too long," Jean snapped suddenly, drawing Nina's attention away from the monitor and over to the opposite end of the long desk where he stood with arms folded. His mouth was twisted into a sour frown, his eyes boring holes into the monitor in front of him. He was veritably quivering with impatience. "We've been at this for over eighteen hours; it's time to move to the next phase of the interrogation."

"Relax Jean, everything is going fine," Costante rumbled quietly from where he stood at Nina's side. Reaching out, he placed one large hand lightly, almost tenderly on her shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. "Nina knows what she's doing when it comes to things like this. I read through her interrogation outline and it's a good plan. It will work; just be patient."

"Costante is right, sir; I know what I'm doing," Nina snapped peevishly as her handler fell silent. She held herself back from scowling at Jean, knowing that such open displays of insolence would be considered crossing a line. His impatience still annoyed her, though. He had approved the plan that she had made, agreeing that it was the most efficient method of getting Balašev to talk. So why could he just shut up and let he work? God how she hated being forced to deal with incompetents and rank amateurs who would be better left to menial labour; like typing up reports or killing people. It hardly required an overabundance of brains to shoot a person or bludgeon them to death.

The sudden sound of rushing water pulled everyone's attentions back to the monitors. Inside the converted autopsy room, the two agents were busy hosing Balašev down with high-pressure nozzles. The thumb-thick streams of water hammered continuously against his body, the force making him groan and writhe in pain as they pounded against his bruised and lacerated flesh.

When Balašev had been sufficiently washed off, a pool of water spreading out beneath his feet as it ran off of his body, the two agents stepped back, the one with the hose shutting off the flow. The other agent strode over to an equipment table behind Balašev, retrieving a large plastic bucket. Staying out of Balašev's view, the agent removed the top, reaching in to take up a handful of coarse white powder. Then, without any word of warning, the man stepped up and slammed his hand into Balašev's back, grinding the powder into his skin, and more importantly, into the open wounds.

Immediately Balašev began to howl into his gag, body thrashing as the salt set off paroxysms of pain. Like a man gone wild he jerked and twisted about, the shackles biting deep into his wrists and ankles. His eyes bulged wide as more handfuls of salt were rubbed into the cuts and slashes along his sides. The residual moisture from his washing-down kept most of the salt stuck to his skin, mixing with the water as it trickled along his limbs and torso and seeping into the wounds.

A slight shifting sound from one corner of the room drew Nina's attention and, turning ever-so-slightly, she caught Ferro squirming slightly, his eyes flicking away from the monitors. Nina sneered at the woman contemptuously, disgusted by her open display of such pitiful weakness. If she didn't have the stomach to watch such work being done, then she should not have come down here in the first place.

Unfortunately for Ferro, Costante had also noticed her discomfort. Leaning in surreptitiously, he whispered into her eat, his voice low enough that Nina doubted that Jean could hear. Nina could, though. "Maybe you should wait outside, Ferro. You know how these things can go; it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better."

"I'm fine," Ferro hissed in retort, shooting Costante with a cold glare. Saying that, she reasserted the icily impassive mask, staring fixedly at the monitor. Nina gave a disdainful sniff, seeing the faintly greenish cast to Ferro's skin that remained. She knew that the woman's composure was but a fragile sham. Pathetic.

When the howling screams coming from Balašev had subsided into a quiet, shuddering groan, the two agents removed the gag and unclipped him from the chains. Between them, they managed to manhandle the man over to a steel chair that had been bolted to the floor. After strapping him in, the two agents left the room, not sparing him a single backwards glance. Nina waited until the sound of the doors clicking shut before flicking a switch on the control panel in front of her. While there was nothing to indicate it, she knew that at that moment, an aerosol gas was being released from canisters mounted beneath the chair.

The door to the observation room opened, admitting the pair of agents. The first man slumped down wearily into an empty chair, the other leaning casually up against the bare cinder-block wall. Folding his arms across his chest, he shook his head slowly, chuckling. "I'll certainly say one thing for this Balašev guy: the man is one tough bastard. I think I broke a knuckle against his face."

"As long as it gets him talking, I don't care if you end up breaking every bone in your hand," Jean retorted testily. "How close is he?"

"To breaking?" the first agent asked, looking up from his seat. "No closer than when he came in. Like Lucas just said, the man's tough. I've had hardened mafia thugs crack after being worked over the way we did Balašev."

"That's not what I was talking about," Jean growled, pinching the bridge of his nose in irritation. "I meant, how close is he to hating and fearing you? We need him reacting on pure animal instincts if we are to proceed to the second phase of the interrogation."

"Oh I think it's safe to say that the man hates us," Lucas said, barking out a harsh, sardonic laugh. "He'd slit our throats in a heartbeat. As to being afraid of us, well, that's harder to determine."

"He's afraid," Nina said, not bothering to look up from the monitor. "I can see it in his eyes; in the way they tighten as soon as he sees you. I can see it in the way he flinches away from your touch ever-so-slightly. He's like a wounded animal; like a dog that's been beaten by its master one too many times. He knows, right down to the depths of his soul that when you two walk through the door, pain is soon to follow. He's almost ready." Staring at the grainy image on the screen, she could feel her pulse beginning to quicken, a faint heat suffusing her body. This is what she lived for, the feeling she craved. It wasn't enough to simply inflict pain. Any brainless fool could inflict pain, with a knife or even just a fist. No, what she relished was the power, the control that she could exert over a victim's body and mind. The power to manipulate their senses; to twist and warp their minds so that they felt only what she wanted them to feel, thought only what she wanted them to think. It was intoxicating.

She slowly realized that everyone was staring at her, a mix of reactions evident on their faces. Costante gazed at her in quiet contemplation, Jean in stern consternation, Ferro with a blend of amazement and nervous apprehension. The two agents however, theirs were faces painted with open fear, as if they had just realized that they had sat down beside a rabid wolf.

Into the awkward silence, Nina suddenly rose, smoothing out the wrinkles in her knee-length pleated skirt. "Well gentlemen, if you'll excuse me a moment, all of this excitement has me feeling a little peckish. I think I'm going to run over to the canteen to grab something to eat. Does anyone else want anything while I'm there?" Glancing quickly about the room at a bunch of stunned, silent faces, she gave a small, indifferent shrug and then strode from the room. She was halfway to the stairs leading up, out of the basement when she heard the sound of the door closing, followed by the heavy footsteps and Costante rushing to catch up. "Joining me for coffee?"

"You do know you freaked everyone out back there, right?" Costante answered, ignoring her slightly flippant comment. He quickly pulled up beside her, stuffing his hands into his pockets. Taller than her by several inches, the heavily-muscled man's longer gait allowed him to match her smooth, gliding stride with ease. "Even Jean's feeling a little unsettled, I'd bet."

"Of course I know," Nina retorted snidely, waving off his comment as being obvious and trivial. "Do you truly believe that I'm oblivious to the way people perceive me? I am _fully_ aware of the fact that most of the Agency's staff views me as a twisted, ghoulish freak. And to be frank, I enjoy that fact; rather, I _relish_ in it. Their fear and anxiety is but one more tool in my arsenal. Why, how do you think any prospective subject for interrogation would react to my presence, seeing that my own colleagues and associates are afraid of me?"

"Can't argue with that kind of logic I suppose," Costante chuckled lightly. He shocked Nina then by reaching out, wrapping one burly arm about her shoulders, hugging her close to his side. Immediately Nina felt herself blushing at the unexpected, but very much welcome, physical contact with her handler. "You're a real piece of work Nina; though I imagine you already know that too, huh?"

"Of…of course I do," she replied shakily, her normal haughty arrogance thrown momentarily off balance.

"So how long do we have until Balašev comes around?"

"I gave him just enough of a dose for the effects to last forty to forty-five minutes," Nina explained, striding into the stairwell as Costante held the door open for her. "That should be enough for his mind to perceive an elapsed time of approximately three hours."

Nodding silently to himself, Costante strode along at her side, his hard, angular face fixed in an expression of thoughtful consideration. The hand that he previously had had draped around her shoulder, he now used to lightly finger one of the buttons on his shirt; a gesture that Nina had come to know meant that he was reflecting deeply about something. Knowing better than to disturb her handler when he was thinking, she chose to simply remain silent. He would speak up when he was ready.

"So what do you call this new drug of yours, anyway?" he asked finally, stuffing his free hand back into his pocket.

"I'm not sure," Nina admitted with a wistful sigh. "At the moment I'm considering calling it the 'Dalí Serum.'"

"The 'Dalí Serum'?"

"Named after Salvatore Dalí, the early twentieth century Spanish surrealism painter."

"Ah, the melting clock guy," Costante said, nodded knowingly as the light of realization blinking on within his mind. "Yes, I can see how that would be somewhat appropriate."

"Quite," Nina quipped brightly with pleasantly self-satisfied feeling. "Now unless there was something else you wanted to discuss Costante, I actually am hungry."

"Yes actually, there was just one more thing I wanted to talk to you about," Costante said quickly, reaching out to grab Nina by the arm, pulling her up to a stop as she was walking away towards the main doors to the medical building. Glancing about, he walked her off to one side of the corridor, where they could have some small modicum of privacy. "I just wanted to tell you that you did a good job the other night. That was some pretty quick thinking on your part and it very likely saved us from having to fight our way through a police blockade. I'm proud of you."

"Oh. I, uh…I see. Th-thank you," Nina stammered weakly. The faint heat that had suffused her body when watching Balašev writhe in pain returned, intensified a hundredfold. She suddenly felt weak in the knees, her entire body beginning to tremble in anticipation. A familiar, fluttering tingle blossomed in the pit of her stomach, making her ache with desire. Her pulse was racing, each breath now coming in quick, panting gasps. She could feel Costante's eyes on her, watching her closely, observing her reactions to his compliment and its thinly veiled implications. He knew full well what she was feeling; knew the kind of fire that his praise had set off within her.

"I was just wondering, seeing as how you just said we have a good forty minutes before Balašev comes around, if you might be interested in getting your mission reward now?"

Nina's entire body stiffened and it was an effort to maintain an outward mask of cool, impassive composure. The tip of her tongue darted out to wet her lips, her eyes flickering about to ensure that there was no-one close enough to overhear. The only people in sight were a pair of nurses at the far end of the hallway, and neither of them was looking in their direction. "Your room or mine?" she breathed.

An hour later, Nina was back in her seat in the observation room, Costante seated next to her. A faint blush coloured her cheeks from both embarrassment and irritation. She could feel Jean and Ferro's eyes upon her, could sense their shared displeasure. Undoubtedly they could smell the lingering odours of sweat and musk that still clung to her skin. There hadn't been time to shower off afterwards. Not that their disapproval bothered her, of course; she couldn't care less about what they thought of her. Besides, weren't there more important matters for them to be focusing on?

"So where are we with Balašev?" she asked in an effort to force everyone's attentions back to the interrogation. On the monitors, the two agents had returned and were once again utilizing the car battery and jumper cables to administer electric shocks to the gagged and shackled Balašev.

"It's precisely as you said earlier," Ferro began hesitantly. "Yurik became visibly agitated as soon as Lucas and Raphael entered the room. He hides it well, but he is quite clearly apprehensive about their presence, if not outright afraid of them."

"Good," Nina said, nodding slowly to herself. "That means he is almost ready for the second phase."

Reaching out, Nina grabbed the two-way radio that lay on the table, its frequency tuned to the earpieces each agent wore. Keying the 'Talk' button, she spoke softly, careful not to allow Yurik to overhear what was being said. "Listen to me very carefully. I need you to start displaying open signs of anger and frustration. Begin acting with increasing violence, as if you were becoming desperate. I need Balašev to believe that you are going to beat him to death. I need him convinced that he is about to die." The agents gave no visible sign that they had received and understood her instructions. That would have given away the fact that they were being instructed. The two men might not be overly intelligent, suited only to basic grunt work, but they were far from stupid and they knew how to follow instructions without questioning them. In short, they were perfect for her uses.

True to her orders, the pair began lashed out at Balašev, sometimes wildly, seemingly raging out of control as they hammered at the man, raining down blows on his face and torso. As the brutal beatings continued to drag on, Nina could tell that it was starting to work. As Balašev screamed and groaned into his gag, she could see the light in his eyes beginning to dim, resignation about the inevitable taking hold of him. With every blow, every electric shock, every new cut and slice, he inched ever nearer to that precipice. And while every fibre of his being cried out, longing for the blissful release that death would bring, human nature and the fundamental, instinctual will to survive clawed at him, driving him to seek out some tiny glimmer of hope, some sign of salvation.

Jean abruptly leaned back in his chair, arms folded across his chest. He was clearly settling in to wait, making himself comfortable. He had reviewed Nina' plan for the interrogation and he knew that this latest step could likely take some time. "Have we learned anything yet from the extra prisoner Petra picked up?"

"Oh, we learned plenty from him," Costante replied. "The man sang like a bird once he realized that we weren't cops and thus not bound by the same rules of engagement when it comes to interrogating suspects. It turns out he and the man whose brains Petra left splattered all over Yurik's wall were low-level thugs for hire. The third man, Anthony I think Petra mention them calling him, was their employer."

"What were they doing at Balašev's villa?" Ferro asked curiously, interrupting Costante's stream of words and setting off a sudden flash of anger and annoyance within Nina that she quickly suppressed.

"Remember that attempted bank robbery that happened in Campobasso a year or so back? Well, apparently Signor Rosito's wife was one of the hostages."

"I remember that," Jean said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "The gunmen were all equipped with military-grade hardware, including full body armour. And if I recall correctly, the gunmen panicked and killed all of the hostages before dying in a shootout with police."

"Yeah, that would be the one," Costante said in acknowledgment. "Signor Rosito didn't take his wife's death too well. He quit his job, sold his house and spent every Euro he had on private investigators, tracking down the man responsible."

"And that man was Balašev?" Jean asked, somewhat incredulously.

"I guess he found out that Balašev was the one who sold the guys the guns they used to hold up the bank. And to kill his wife."

Jean sighed, shaking his head sadly. "A shame that Petra was forced to kill him then. A man with that kind of determination and drive might have been worth hiring."

"If only he had known they were both on the same side," Costante added sombrely. "A real shame how things work out sometimes."

Another hour passed in relative silence, except for the sounds coming in from the interrogation room. The torments dragged on and on, until even Nina began growing bored of the incessant cries of pain and screams of anger. Small contact burns from the jumper cables began to mar Balašev's back, chest and sides as the agents resorted to inflicting longer electric shocks in their increasingly desperate efforts to break him. It wouldn't be long now.

Suddenly, amidst the agonized wails, Nina picked up on a change in the noise coming from Balašev. She wasn't certain at first and she strained to make out the sound more clearly, but as the agents withdrew, looks of genuine surprise on their faces, she grew convinced. Balašev was laughing. It was a weak, shuddering, rasping bark of a laugh, but it was a laugh. He was laughing at them. Perhaps it was born from delirium, perhaps from scornful derision at the agents' futile efforts to break him, perhaps it was a calculated move to deliberately drive the pair into going too far and finally ending the torment forever. Either way, the laughter came and the effects couldn't have been more rewarding.

That mocking laughter proved the final straw as far as the agents' patience was concerned. In a fit of rage, Lucas unhooked Balašev's shackles from the suspended chain, almost tearing the man's shoulders from their sockets in his eagerness, and then with one mighty blow, knocked the battered and bleeding man to the floor. Instantly the pair of agents set upon him, booted feet slamming into his stomach and chest, stomping down on arms, legs and head. Balašev curled himself into a foetal position, hands wrapped protectively about his head.

_Yes, yes that's it,_ Nina whispered to herself excitedly. Her eyes went wide, lips parting slightly as a shiver of delight coursed through her. It was perfect! She couldn't have asked for a better performance if she had personally orchestrated it. Balašev was ready; it was finally time for phase two!

"I need to get in there. Now!" she cried, leaping up from her seat and dashing for the door. Costante was only a half-step behind her as she rushed from the room, wavy black hair streaming out behind her. Her hurried footsteps alerted the two guards standing watch outside the door to the converted autopsy room and they both looked to her curiously. Seeing where she was headed, one of the men moved as if to bar her way and she snarled at him venomously. The other man cast a quick glance over her shoulder and Costante must have given some small sign of assent, because he immediately turned to his partner and waved him back.

Pulling up short outside the door, Nina took a moment to steady herself. She ran her hands down her body, smoothing out wrinkles in the simple dark-blue blazer and knee-length pencil skirt that she had changed into.

"Are you sure you're ready for this?" Costante whispered softly, coming up behind her and placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "You've never done anything like this before."

"Of course I'm ready," she snapped back. "This is my plan, after all. I would not have devised it if I was not capable of fulfilling my role in it." She knew that he wasn't trying to cast aspersions against her abilities; merely ensuring that she was truly committed to her course. But that he would still choose to give voice to such doubts, particularly where others could hear, it stung. She brushed it off though, determinedly focusing on the task before her.

"You two, come in with me and follow my lead," she barked at the pair of security guards, who stared down at her in stunned silence. She didn't wait for their response, trusting that they would do as commanded either through their own volition or Costante's urging.

Stepping between the guards, Nina gripped the door's handle and flung it open, storming into the room in a furious rage. The two agents glanced up, surprised, at her entrance, one poised with his foot pulled back, ready to land a savage kick to Balašev's ribs. "What in God's name is going on in here?" she roared, eyes blazing. "Get the Hell away from him! Officers, arrest these two immediately; they are hereby charged with aggravated assault, unlawful confinement and attempted murder."

Sweeping across the room, Nina shoved aside a stunned Lucas to kneel down beside Balašev's prone form. He was very still and for a brief moment, she feared that she may have left things too late. A quick check of his pulse, however, proved that the man was still alive, though his heart rate did seem dangerously weak in thready. Glancing back, over her shoulder, she shouted out forcefully before returning her attention to Balašev. "Somebody get a doctor in here! Signor Balašev, can you hear me? My name is Nina Barone and I'm here to help you. A medical team is on the way, you just need to hang on." She spoke in a kind and soothing voice, gently brushed matted hair out of his eyes. She could see him peering up at her from between his upraised arms and the lumpy mounds of his swollen face. She smiled down at him, continuing to stroke his head tenderly. "It's going to be all right now. No one is going to hurt you anymore; I promise."

A team of nurses and orderlies, led by a white-coated doctor, arrived minutes later, pushing a gurney loaded with emergency medical equipment and supplies. Nina stepped back quickly as they set to work treating Balašev's gruesome injuries. A quick glance on her part assured her that he was still conscious, so she spun around on one heel to fix the two agents, now in handcuffs, with a withering glare and began tearing into them. "This is the most atrocious, appalling and inhumane scene that I have _ever_ witnessed! I will have both your badges for this, I swear to God! You're careers are finished, do you hear me? _Finished_! Neither one of you will be able to get a job working mall security by the time I'm done with you!" Spittle flew from her mouth as she raged, her green eyes afire with righteous fury. Both agents quailed beneath her vicious tirade, her reputation as well as her status as a fearsome combat cyborg ensuring that they would be intimidated. "Get them out of my sight," she spat, directing the comment to the two guards, who did their best to maintain straight, serious faces despite their undoubtedly feeling more than slightly stunned themselves. They did a passable job.

As Balašev was wheeled out of the room, the nurses and doctor still fluttering about the gurney, Costante strode up to stand next to her, his face calm and impassive. Nina's heart was pounding, the adrenaline coursing through her veins making her almost giddy with excitement. There had been a light in Balašev's eye, just as she was stepped away from him, that she had recognized. Gratitude. Just as he had been hovering on the verge of death, the cold jaws of oblivion closing about him, she had swooped in and banished the pain, offering that tiny glimmer of hope. It was perfect!

"So, what now?" Costante asked, arms folded against that massive chest of his. She could still feel the hard lines of that chest beneath her fingers, could still taste his sweat and saliva on her lips. Her legs trembled slightly at the remembered sensation of his pushing, thrusting mass, edging her every closer to the sweet, overwhelmingly euphoric release of…

Nina yelped sharply, clapping one hand to her ear while twisting around to glare up at her handler. He stared back at her, frowned slightly in mild reproach. It was only then that she realized where her mind had been wandering to and her face began to heat. "Focus Nina," he said flatly. I asked you what our next course of action was."

"Oh, uh…y-yes. What…what time is it?" she stammered, clearly flustered and embarrassed at having been caught fantasizing.

"Almost seven-thirty."

"In that case then," Nina said, forcing some measure of her usual haughtiness back into her voice. "Our next step is to shower and have breakfast. If you recall, I never did end up making it to the canteen and I am _still_ hungry. I also believe that I have a shoot-house drill scheduled for later this morning, correct?" She waited for Costante's affirming nod before going on. "Well then, let's get going."

Several hours later, after a full morning of breakfast, training drills, a mind-numbingly boring mathematics class and then lunch, Nina eased herself down into the padded chair next to Balašev's hospital bed. The man was conscious, his eyes closely following her every move. Salves applied to his face had helped reduce the swelling, though it still looked a solid, mangled mass of purples, yellows and greens. Leather shackles kept his hands and feet pinned to the bed, though it was likely that he was still far too weak to so much as sit up without assistance.

"Signor Balašev, do you recognize me?" Nina asked softly. He nodded silently, the sedatives and painkillers in his system making him too groggy to talk at the moment. Slowly he raised on of his hands, as far as the shackle would allow, glancing at it before looking at her questioningly.

"I apologize for the bindings, but unfortunately some procedures must be observed. You are still a suspect in an on-going investigation into illegal arms-dealing, after all." His mouth twisted into a wry, humourless smile, his body shaking slightly as he chuckled sardonically.

After a while, as lucidity returned and his strength increased, Balašev spoke, his voice a harsh, quite rasp that Nina would have had to strain to hear if not for her enhanced hearing. "Ask your questions, Signorina. I have gazed into the open maw of death and felt its teeth rend my flesh. You cannot hurt me."

Nina shook her head sadly, placing one hand tenderly atop his own. "I'm not here to hurt you, Signor Balašev. I promised you that I wouldn't and that I wouldn't let anyone else hurt you anymore. But I _do_ need answers. We need to know who you bought your weapons from in Germany."

"I will tell you nothing."

"Yurik please," Nina exclaimed, inching herself closer to his bedside. Her eyes were wide and pleading, inky black curls framing her heart-shaped face. "You gain nothing by refusing to talk to us. I can't help you of you don't talk to me. You sold weapons to Padania cells; sold weapons to terrorists. In some eyes, that makes you a terrorist too. You're an intelligent man Yurik; you know what happens to people convicted of being a terrorist. They end up in prisons like Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib.

"I can help you avoid that fate but only if you talk to me." Reaching out, she placed her other hand on his, clasping it gently. Leaning forward, she stared imploringly into his eyes, begging him to understand and accept what she was trying to tell him. "The truth, Yurik, is that the government doesn't care about you; you're just a small fish to them. They don't really care about your weapons smuggling. If it wasn't you selling those weapons to Padania, it would be someone else. No, what they want are the people _supplying_ those weapons. Those are the people they want. All you have to do is give up their names, tell us how to find them and I can assure you that you'll walk out of here with a slap on the wrist. At worst, you'll be extradited back to Kosovo and barred from ever returning to Italy. That has to sound better than spending the rest of your life in some dark hole in a prison that doesn't officially exist, doesn't it?"

"You do not frighten me," he began before Nina cut him off sharply, interrupting.

"I'm not trying to frighten you Yurik; I'm trying to impress upon you the serious gravity of your situation here." Their gazes locked together, a contest of wills playing out between them. Balašev's jaw firmed, a fierce light of stubborn determination glowing in his eyes, and Nina knew that he would never give in. She had hoped that the kind, comforting compassion she offered would have enticed him to cooperate, her having saved him from torment making him trust her enough to volunteer the information. But it seemed it was not to be.

_Oh well,_ she thought with an inward grin. _That's why we have backup plans_. Aloud she said sadly, pulling back and rising. "I see. I'm sorry we couldn't come to an arrangement Yurik."

"And now you will send for your thugs to again try beating it out of me," Balašev rasped, sinking back down into his pillow.

"No, I will not," Nina snapped hotly. "I gave you my word that I would not allow anyone else to hurt you Yurik and that promise still stands; regardless of whether you answer my questions or not." She paused, starting to turn to leave, cocking her head as if considering something. "There is, however, something I think you should see."

A quick call directed towards the room's door summoned a nurse and Costante, who was dressed in a rather tight-fitting security guard's uniform as a disguise. With swift, concise instructions, Nina directed the nurse to move Balašev out of his bed and into a wheelchair. Ordinarily the woman would have refused, balking at the notion of moving a patient who was still recovering from such grievous injuries but she had been commanded to obey her orders earlier in anticipation of this.

With Costante helping, Balašev was quickly transferred over to the wheelchair, wrists cuffed to the armrests. Nina then strode out of the room and towards the main service elevator, the nurse pushing the wheelchair, Costante bringing up the rear. Into the elevator and down, back into the basement they went, Balašev stiffening as he saw the bare cinderblock walls and the familiar doors spaced evenly along the hallway.

"What are we doing down here?" he asked warily, unable to keep a nervous quaver from entering into his voice, revealing his nervousness.

Nina sighed dramatically, twisting about to glance over her shoulder. "As I told you: I need to show you something." Despite her words, the man's agitation only increased as it became obvious where they were headed. He was visibly trembling as she came to a stop in front of the converted autopsy room, his eyes darting wildly in fear.

Without preamble, Nina pushed her way into the room, her high-heeled shoes clicking against the concrete floor and echoing about the room. As the nurse and Costante followed, wheeling Balašev inside, Nina saw him stiffen in shock and alarm. His jaw dropped open, his eyes bulging wide at the sight that greeted him. His throat seemed to constrict, as his efforts to talk brought about only a strangled croak. "What…what the Hell is this? What have you done?"

In the middle of the room, suspended from the same chain that Balašev himself had spent so much time hanging from, was a young girl of about eleven or twelve. Her straight black hair was dirty and dishevelled, hanging in a snarled mess to just below her bared, bony shoulders. The girl had been stripped of her clothes, leaving her in just a pair of cotton panties that had started out white, but were now amply stained with dirt and urine. The cold air in the room had her entire body pimpled in goose bumps and she was shivering considerably from the combination of both the cold and her fear. A length of bandage had been wrapped about the girl's head several times, effectively blindfolding her. The fabric was wet from her tears, which glistened on her cheeks and dripped from her chin.

As Balašev spoke, the girl flinched as if struck, her face twisting towards the sound. She let out a whimpering cry, twisting in her bonds. "U…uncle Yurik? Help me, please; I'm scared! Ow!" The girl screamed out in pain suddenly, her thrashing causing one foot to slide out from under her, sending of her weight crashing down upon her shoulders. With a monumental effort, she managed to struggle back into a more stable position, a fresh wave of tears leaking out from under the blindfold and spilling down her face.

Balašev roared wildly, struggling against his bonds like a man possessed. "No, God help me, no! Ariana!" It took the combined efforts of both the nurse and Costante to hold the man down, his rage lending him the strength of a savage beast. Watching the spectacle with boredom and disdain, Nina rolled her eyes and calmly walked over to the equipment table. There, she filled a syringe with a mild sedative and as Costante strained to keep him still, she jabbed the needle into Balašev's neck and pressed down on the plunger. Almost immediately his struggles slackened off, his movements becoming sluggish and uncoordinated. He remained conscious and alert though, just as she wanted. Knocking him out would completely defeat the whole purpose of having brought him down here.

"I will kill you for this," Balašev rasped slowly and deliberately. "Every last one of you I will hunt down and skin alive. I swear it." Cold death stared out from his eyes, an icy tempest that promised retribution. Nina met that gaze calmly, unaffected by its intensity. Rather than confront his threat, she instead shrugged it off, dismissing it as irrelevant. She looked away and walked over to Ariana, who wined piteously at the sounds of her footsteps and trembled in terror.

"As I promised Yurik, you will no longer be harmed in the course of this interrogation. You will note, however, that I made no mention of not harming others in your place. Hence why I took the liberty of brining your niece here to help us in the questioning."

"You soulless bitch!" Balašev spat, body quivering with fury. "What did you do to my brother and his family?"

Nina smiled broadly over at him. It was a cold, cruel grin devoid of mirth, holding only a dark, malicious glee at his anguish. "Your brother and the rest of his family are all fine and relatively unharmed. Though I would imagine them to be rather distraught at the moment.

"This is what is going to happen Yurik: I am going to ask you a series of questions and every time you refuse to answer, or I decide that you are taking too long to answer, I will be forced to hurt little Ariana here. Very simple, yes?"

Yurik licked his lips, his eyes flicking between Nina and his niece and back again. Sweat beaded on his brow and rolled down his face. "You're bluffing. Not even you people would be so ruthless as to torture a child." His voice was heavy with forced conviction and it was obvious to Nina that he was trying to convince himself more than anything.

Chuckling quietly, Nina walked over to the corner of the room where a wheeled tray holding the car battery, variable voltage limiter and jumper cables that were oh-so-familiar to Balašev sat waiting. Pushing the tray ahead of her, she returned to the girl's side. Balašev watched her closely, like a mouse – petrified with fear – watching a cat as it stalked ever closer. The garden hose that the two agents had used to wash Yurik down with was coiled up on a plastic spool mounted to the wall and Nina unwound it until she could reach the middle of the room with it. Turning on the water, she sprayed Ariana with it, the girl squealing in shock and alarm as the cold water hit her bare skin.

"What are you doing? Stop it! Stop it!" Balašev screamed, tugging fitfully at the handcuffs securing him to the wheelchair.

Dropping the hose to the floor, Nina took up the jumper cable. She adjusted the settings on the voltage limiter and then, fixing Balašev with a cold stare, pressed the jumper cable to the girl's exposed back. Instantly Ariana exploded in a horrifyingly agonized shriek that echoed and reverberated off the walls, filling the air with its harsh cacophony. Her body arched forward, away from the electrical jolt, uncontrolled muscle spasms making her twitch and jerk erratically. For a long, slow count to five Nina held the contact, before pulling it away sharply. Still wailing and thrashing, Ariana begged her uncle to help her, calling out to him between racking sobs. Balašev matched her cries with a wordless roar of rage, tears glistening in his eyes as he watched his niece scream in pain and fear.

"Now that there will be no more questions about the legitimacy of my claims," Nina said, speaking loudly to be heard over the girl's continued sobbing. "Why don't we begin? What is your name?"

"I…w-what?" Balašev stammered, caught off guard by the unexpectedly innocuous question.

"Tisk, tisk Yurik, off to such a bad start already," Nina sighed, feigning disappointment. She brought the jumper cable back down, drawing forth a second screeching cry. She gave another slow, silent count to five and then pulled away. "Let's try again; what is your name?"

"I…Yurik Balašev."

"Very good," Nina said brightly, nodding her head in approval. "Next question…"

Over and over for the next hour, Nina kept up the torment. Her questions varied from the unimportant and downright irrelevant, to the more serious and important inquiries about his arms dealing business. Sometimes she would give him upwards of a full minute to sit there silently, considering, before he finally answered, other times she would deem him too slow to respond after only a few seconds and deliver another vicious jolt to Ariana. As time wore on, however, and the smell of fresh urine from Ariana's having soiled herself again began to suffuse the room, Nina noticed fine cracks forming in Balašev's defiance. His walls were breaking down, his resolve crumbling in the face of his niece's torment.

"Enough!" Balašev roared suddenly, forcing Nina to blink in surprise. "Why are you doing this? She is just a child; she deserves none of this! Torture me if you must but…but please, let her go. I…I beg of you."

"I'm sorry Yurik, but I can't do that," Nina replied softly, apologetically. "I gave you my word that you would not be harmed any further and I am a woman of my word. Unfortunately, that only leaves me with the option of torturing Ariana. And unfortunately, you did not answer my question."

Ariana's throat was scraped raw by her continued screams, her face and chest smeared with saliva, mucus and bile. Every so often Nina would wet her down again with the hose, but even so the smell of cooked flesh began to overwhelm the scent of urine as the innumerable electric jolts left contact burns on her skin. Blood flowed down her arms from where the handcuffs securing her hands above her head had cut deep into her wrists, the result of her having lost all strength in her legs. She know hung, limp, completely supported by her wrists. Her thrashing had caused one of her shoulders to become dislocated, which had been the point where she had vomited all over herself and the floor. But Nina was ruthless and relentless, her eyes glowing with a sense of pure, unadulterated glee. Her fingers tangled in Ariana's hair, she pressed the jumper cable tight to the girl's side, listening and soaking in the sound as she screamed and screamed and screamed.

All at once, Balašev broke down, screaming and wailing and crying frantically. He thrashed in his seat so forcefully that it seemed almost as if he were taking some kind of seizure. His own wrists were long-since torn open and bloodied by his struggles. "No, no, no, no, no, God stop! Stop it, please! Get your fucking hands off of my daughter!"

Instantly Nina broke off, stepping away and snapping around to stare down at him. Her mouth dropped open, eyes wide, expression incredulous. Finally! This was the moment she had been waiting for. At long last his defences shattered, living him completely bared and exposed. It was time for the killing blow.

"What?" Nina breathed perfectly feigned amazement. "Your daughter? But I thought you said she was…oh my! Oh, I see. Well then, _that_ certainly explains a few things. No wonder you and your brother's wife don't get along. Tell me something, did she cheat on Dmitri with you before or after she was married to him? Not that it really matters, I suppose. I'll assume that he doesn't know his precious oldest child is actually his brother's bastard daughter?"

"Please," Balašev sobbed, pointedly ignoring her taunting jibes. "Just stop hurting her. Please, for the love of God, I beg you; just stop."

"Why should I?" Nina asked flippantly, twirling the jumper cable around in one hand as if it were a toy, the entire affair nothing more than a game to her. "You still haven't answered all of my questions. And besides, your little Ariana's screams are just so beautiful to listen to; I'm not sure I _want_ to stop torturing her."

That final taunt seemed to do it and Balašev's head slowly sank to his chest, shoulders trembling as he wept silently. "You win; I'll tell you everything. Anything you want to know but please…just stop…stop hurting her. Please."

Nina smiled, setting down the jumper cable and slowly walking across the room. She knelt down in front of Balašev and with tender care, lifted his head until she could look into his eyes. "Thank you Yurik. I am so happy that we could come to an amicable arrangement."

* * *

Inside the monitoring room, Jean watched the proceedings with a face that appeared carved from stone. His jaw ached from having it clenched so tight, his teeth grinding together audibly. He could feel his nails biting into the calloused skin of his palms, his knuckles white from the force of his grip. Sweat prickled at his forehead but he couldn't make himself reach up to wipe it away. He didn't think that he could move at all.

The sounds of retching came from the other side of the room and Jean managed to tear his gaze away from the monitor long enough to check on his companion. Ferro straightened shakily, wiping at her mouth with a tissue. Her face was pale and greenish and she looked ready to sick up again. There wasn't the slightest trace of her customary taciturn composure. Her eyes were wide and staring and she kept one hand pressed tight to her stomach as she swallowed back rising bile. Another agonized shriek pierced the air and Ferro convulsed, twisting back and falling to her knees again to vomit noisily into the garbage can.

A very small part of Jean took pleasure in seeing the woman's vaunted icy demeanour shattered, feeling that it was fit punishment for her having overstepped her authority so flagrantly. The rest of him, however, felt only sympathy. He wasn't entirely certain how much longer it would be before he found himself joining her.

He had known. God help him, he had known when he ordered Costante and Elio to abduct Balašev's bastard daughter that it would come to this. He thought that he had been prepared for what had been planned, for what was happening right in front of him on the screen. God knew that he had crossed so many lines that he wasn't sure he had anything remotely resembling morality left in him. But the harsh reality was so much more…intense and visceral than he ever would have imagined. He had tortured men for information. He had ordered women tortured for information. He had stood by and watched as Rico calmly beat men to the brink of death in order to get them to talk. But none of those past transgressions, as justified as they were in his mind, could compare to those horrendous screams. Elio had been right in leaving Marisa behind; she did not deserve to have her hands soiled with this. Had he been in the man's place, Jean would not have wanted Rico to have anything to do with this either. Not this.

When Balašev finally uttered those final words, admitting defeat and submitting, Jean heaved a profound sigh of relief. He sat back, slumping in his chair. His face was sopping wet with sweat and his hand trembled as he reached up to his pocket, pulling out a silk handkerchief and mopping his brow. His arms and legs felt weak, like overcooked pasta.

"Thank God," Ferro whispered, still looking as if she might sick up again. Jean ignored her, switching the cameras back on, those that focused on Balašev at least, and began the recording. Those that might have showed some view of the girl, he left turned off.

Words tumbled from Balašev's mouth as Nina began asking the real questions. As he talked, the coldly rational part of Jean's brain took hold, shoving everything else aside as he listened and stored away the information. Within the first few minutes, plans began to form as Balašev gave up names, locations, contact details, trade routes, everything they needed to track down his suppliers and customers.

One piece of information immediately jumped out at him and he frowned thoughtfully. An idea instantly came to mind but he dithered. It was a risky plan, not to mention one that broke virtually every single operational protocol. But it was the only option available with any chance of success. He didn't want to have to resort to it, but if Balašev's information was correct, then there was no time to delay. It would be impossible to get another _fratello_ in place fast enough to pull it off. Yes it was the only way.

"Ferro, get me a secured phone line; I need to get in contact with Jacob."


	14. Chapter 13: Memories of Blood

Chapter 13: Memories of Blood

Head pounding with the force of a thousand drums, Melanie groaned weakly. Pain and nausea wracked her body with equal intensity as her eyes slowly fluttered open, revealing a pale blue sky laced with wispy clouds. She had been laid out on her back, with what felt like a rolled up jacket placed under her head for cushioning. The branches of several towering coniferous trees cut across her vision, their tight clusters of deep green needles waving in the stiff, ever-present breeze.

Closing her eyes again, she inhaled deeply, taking in the scents that lingered on the air. Most prominent were the scents of pine sap from the trees overhead and hardy alpine grasses. Beneath them, however, were the tantalizing fragrances of wildflowers. There was also, above them all, the crisp and clean odour of snow and ice, carried on the breeze from the higher reaches of the surrounding mountains.

She could feel sweat slicking her face and lifted her hand to wipe it away. Or at least, she tried to. There was absolutely no strength to her limbs and after several unsuccessful tries, she let her arm flop back down uselessly to her side. The effort left her feeling exhausted and drained of whatever little energy had been remaining to her and she panted as though she had just run a hundred miles. More sweat had popped out, slicking her skin and making her shiver as the cold wind chilled her.

A faint, shuffling sound at her side made Melanie turn her head slightly, glancing over to where she found Jacob sitting up against the slanting trunk of a tree. He was watching her, his dark face set in grim lines, his brow deeply furrowed. His rucksack was on the ground next to him. When he saw that she was once again conscious and aware of him he spoke, quietly yet firmly. "Don't bother trying to get up yet; you're still too weak for that."

"What…what happened?" Melanie asked, her voice cracking so that her words came out in a strained croak.

Rather than answer her question, Jacob responded with a question of his own. "What do you remember happening?"

Melanie took a moment to consider before replying, her mind mulling over the events of the past hour or so. She remembered where they were and what they were doing there, of course. She knew that she had been walking along a rocky ridge, somewhat lost in thought following the unexpected disaster that their lunch break had ended up turning into. After that, however, the memories started getting hazy, broken and distorted. There was one thing, however, that was still clear to her. "I…I think I fell."

"You did," Jacob grunted sourly. "And you're damned lucky I managed to grab you and haul your ass back to safety. There's an almost thousand-foot drop off the edge of this ridge; not even your cyborg body would have survived that kind of drop." His voice grew hard then, hints of anger tainting his words and making Melanie cringe back slightly. "I don't know what the hell was going through that thick skull of yours, stepping out onto that outcrop. Were you not paying any attention at all to what was around you? Are you fucking blind? Did you even think for one God damned second before deciding to just walk off the side of a mountain? How many God damned times to I have to tell you to pay attention to your surroundings before it finally sinks in? For Christ's sake, Melanie, you could have fucking killed yourself! You could have killed the both of us! What the Hell is wrong with you?"

Melanie was forced to turn her face away from Jacob at the force of his tirade. Shame, humiliation and bone-deep sorrow tore at her soul and she didn't want him to see the bitter tears of self-loathing that were beginning to sting her eyes. Sniffing back her sobs, she mumbled out softly, barely audible. "I'm sorry."

"I don't give a damn if you're sorry," Jacob snapped back scathingly, his gaze shooting fiery lances down at Melanie. "Exactly what use would your apologies be to me if you had ended up at the bottom of that cliff, broken and bleeding to death?" Melanie didn't think he actually wanted an answer to that question, so she wisely and correctly chose to just remain silent, her face still turned away from him.

She expected him to continue berating her and when, after a minute or two, he didn't, she turned back towards him, suddenly feeling both curious and apprehensive at the same time. Bewilderingly, Jacob staring down at his hands, which were clasped together loosely atop his drawn up knees. He had a far-away look in his eyes and his mouth was pursed slightly in a thoughtful expression.

All at once, Jacob sighed, reaching up with both hands to scrub at his face. His eyes refocused and he shifted his gaze to Melanie, who was still watching him with no small amount of nervous apprehension. "Actually, I'm probably just as much to blame as you are. I should never have allowed you to walk out onto that ridge in the first place."

"But…I don't understand," Melanie stammered out, confused. "Why shouldn't we have been out on that ridge? That's where the trail led me."

Jacob sighed again, shaking his head slowly. "No, Melanie, it didn't. You were following a false trail. I knew it and should have stopped you, but I didn't." Seeing her look of blank-faced incomprehension, Jacob rose and, crossing the short distance between them, helped Melanie up into a sitting position. He then thrust his arm out, pointing off to his left. "Look out there Melanie; what do you see?"

Following the direction his hand indicated, Melanie surveyed the surrounding area with a careful, critical eye. She was quickly able to determine that they were only a short distance away from the ridgeline where she had collapsed, perhaps a few hundred meters back. She could make out the scuff marks in the rocky ground from where Jacob must have had to dragged her.

Further along the ridge the terrain began breaking up into a series of slab-sided cliffs and craggy rock formations. About a kilometre past where Melanie had nearly plunged to her death, the path she had been following deteriorated into little more than a narrow, twisting goat trail that wound up the steep slopes, eventually disappearing entirely. With a sinking realization she understood what Jacob was hinting at. There was no way they would have been able to keep following the ridge and it would have been next to impossible for the GIS commandos to have continued taking that path as well. Not unless they had come equipped with full mountaineering gear, which they hadn't.

She passed on her revelation to Jacob, who nodded in agreement. "Exactly. Damn it, Melanie, this is why I keep telling you to pay attention to what's around you. Tracking isn't just about being able to find a trail and then blindly following where it leads you. If you want to be able to track down an adversary, whether they're human or not, you need to be able to get inside their head and anticipate what they're going to do; where they're going to run to."

"How do I do that?" Melanie asked simply, curious.

"By knowing what they're ultimate goal is. If you know what they want, then you can start to figure out how they might plan to get it. What would someone that you're hunting want to achieve?"

"To escape, I guess," Melanie replied after a moment's consideration. "Right?"

"Right," Jacob said, nodding. "So, knowing that, you would look for places in the area that would allow that person to escape you; a road where a waiting vehicle could pick them up, an airfield, a waterway, an international border if they knew you wouldn't be able to follow them into another country." Melanie nodded slowly, understanding what Jacob was telling her. It _did_ make sense. Oddly, she felt a strange sense of familiarity with the lesson he was teaching her. It was almost as if she should already know all of this, like it had all been taught to her before, by someone else. But that was impossible. Wasn't it?

Jacob was still talking, Melanie realized with a start, and quickly refocused her attention to listen. "Being able to make those kinds of predictions means you don't have to rely just on being able to follow their trail. If you know that the person you're tracking is heading to a certain spot, then you can head straight there in hopes of cutting them off, or at least closing the distance and picking up the trail again."

"I understand. But what about the commandos then? I mean, they aren't trying to escape us, are they?"

"No, they aren't," Jacob said in confirmation. "Their orders were to make a trail for you to find and follow, and then to set up camp and wait for us to reach them. So what does that tell you about where they might be?"

"That they'll be in a spot most suitable for setting up a campsite," Melanie blurted out excitedly, the answer coalescing within her mind even as Jacob was still talking. Her unwillingness to interrupt him while he was speaking was the only thing that had prevented her from trampling right overtop of his words. "They'll have looked for a spot with easy access to fresh water, natural shelter from the wind and flat terrain." Not all of their time over the past several hours had been spent in more-or-less complete silence. During their intermittent breaks, usually when Melanie paused to take a new bearing and log their location, Jacob took the time to teach her about various camping skills and basic woodcraft.

Melanie beamed with pride as, after a moment of close scrutiny and careful deliberation, Jacob nodded his agreement and approval of her response. They then immediately set about the task of reviewing the map in order to pick out the most likely locations for where the commandos might have chosen to set up camp. There were a lot; Stelvio National Park was rather popular for hiking and camping and after only ten minutes of careful examination, they came up with over fifty potential sites. Even taking the general direction the commandos' trail had been following into account, in the end they were only able to narrow the selection down to a list of some seventeen possible spots. But, as Jacob reminded her while they were repacking and getting ready to set out, using logic and understanding of the terrain to predict your quarry's movements only provided a general guideline at best. Finding and following their actual trail itself still remained the primary and most reliable method of tracking.

It took the pair the better half of an hour to backtrack through the forested slopes; wending their way between rocky outcrops and deep gullies, making their way down into shallow valleys and then back up the other side. They were almost halfway back to where they had stopped to take lunch before Jacob deemed then far enough back for Melanie to once again resume the search for the commandos' trail.

"Um…Jacob?" Melanie ventured hesitantly at one point, fidgeting nervously and playing with the hem of her coat. A niggling sense of guilt had been weighing upon her mind and she found herself suddenly compelled to speak up and apologize. "I'm really sorry about earlier."

"I already told you that I don't want your apologies, Melanie; I want you to not screw up like that again," Jacob replied gruffly. "I can't always be there to haul your ass out of trouble, which is why you _need_ to be able to take care of yourself."

"Oh, uh…actually I was talking about what happened during lunch," Melanie stammered in mild shock, blushing faintly at the misunderstanding. "I should never have asked you about Rwanda; you obviously didn't want to talk about it and it was none of my business. So…I'm sorry."

Jacob gaped at her, feeling his own sense of embarrassment at having mistook what she was apologizing for. He recovered quickly though, clearing his throat roughly and coughing to crudely mask his discomfiture. "Oh right, that. Well, don't worry about it; I wasn't really angry with you anyway."

Now Melanie was the one left gaping in shock. He hadn't actually been angry with her? Well it would have been nice if he had told _her_ that! She had spent the two hours following the incident almost sick with worry that she had managed to completely destroy the delicate framework of trust and camaraderie between them. Her insides had felt as if they had been twisted up into knots. She had been so distracted by her feelings of anxiety and despair that she had very nearly walked over the edge of a mountain! And now here he was, brushing off the entire incident, telling her that it hadn't been anything for her to worry about? That it was no big deal and to forget about it? How dare he? If Melanie had not been certain that her Conditioning would once again clamp down on her for it, she would have screamed in frustrated rage. Instead, all she did was nod and smile weakly, continuing on through the trees.

When at last they returned to a spot where both could be sure the trail they followed was true, Melanie began the laborious task of hunting down new signs of the commandos' passing. The sun was starting to sink low on the horizon, stretching long shadows across their path. For over an hour Melanie searched, examining the landscape with a focused intensity only a cyborg could maintain.

Some small measure of vindication came to Melanie as, after a painstaking forty minutes of searching, she was finally able to locate three more scraps of yellow ribbon; enough clues for her and Jacob to definitively agree that they were once again on the correct trail. The ribbons had been particularly well hidden and he was forced to admit that Melanie wasn't entirely to blame for having missed the split in the trail. He told her as such, promising to speak with the commandos once they finally reached them. Teaching her how to differentiate false trails from a real one was all well and good, but this was only supposed to be a preliminary training exercise; its purpose to help her learn the basics of wilderness tracking. More advanced lessons could come later, once she had honed those core skills and instincts.

The day wore on, the hours slipping by, and the late afternoon sun sank ever lower. It was becoming increasingly obvious to Jacob that they would not be finished before nightfall. Very soon they would have to switch their priorities to finding a suitable place of their own to set up camp. Fortunately, however, because they had already reviewed the map earlier, looking for just that thing, Jacob already had several nearby locations in mind. If he had taken the time to pause and think about the situation, he would likely have found it rather ironic.

The indelible and unavoidable laws of Murphy proved bound and determined to grind at Jacob's patience, however. With only a couple of hours of good daylight left, the plan had been to continue following the trail for another hour or so, before making their way to one of the nearby spots on the map they had identified as a suitable campsite. The Fates, it seemed, were not in a cooperative mood.

Melanie stood in the middle of a wide, well-worn hiking trail, red-gold hair swinging and bobbing gently as she swivelled her head about, glancing down both forks in the path. For the past half-hour, the commandos' trail had followed the hiking trail, leaving both cyborg and handler to conclude that the remainder of the day would be fairly easy. The path made for quick, easy walking, which is clearly why the commandos had chosen to follow it for a time. But now, she was faced with a choice and no clear answer as to what to do. The map showed that both forks wound through the mountains in the same general direction, each leading towards a fair number of potential campsites.

"Well?" Jacob asked, growing slightly impatient with what he no doubt saw as her dithering. "Which way do we go?"

"I…I don't know," she admitted sheepishly, shoulders slumping. The last ribbon she had found had only been a few hundred meters back along the trail. If the pattern held, it wouldn't be for at least a couple of kilometres before the next one was to be found. "I don't know what to do."

Melanie cringed inwardly as Jacob sighed, moving off to the side of the trail and waving her over. She moved hesitantly, her feet dragging in the hard-packed dirt. Part of her knew and was already bracing for an expected scolding.

"There's nothing wrong with ignorance," Jacob said, dashing Melanie's fears and catching her completely off guard. "Not when it has to do with something you haven't been taught yet. I'd rather you admit you don't know what to do and ask for help, instead of pretending you know and end up doing something stupid and screwing things up even worse. Got it?"

"Y…yes sir."

"Good. Now then, what you need to do is follow each branch of the path for a set distance, gauging whether or not it's the one your quarry took. Unfortunately, our maps show that both forks go to roughly the same places, so that won't help. And the path is worn enough that it won't hold boot prints or any other obvious signs of their passage."

"So what do I look for?" Melanie asked, not wining or petulant, merely expressing her genuine curiosity.

Frowning, Jacob peered off down the nearest branch of the path, running a hand back through his hair. "Unfortunately, in this case the only thing you can do is keep going until you find the next ribbon." Turning away, he glanced up at the slowly darkening sky, shading his eyes and squinting against the harsh glare of the dying sun. "Normally I'd have you follow both forks yourself, but seeing as how we're on a bit of a time crunch, I'll spare you the extra work and we'll each take a path."

Taken aback by the unexpected concession, feeling pleasantly surprised, Melanie blinked in shock. "Oh. Uh…okay."

"Alright, listen up; I'll take the right-hand fork, you take the left," Jacob explained, turning back and fixing Melanie with a firm, level stare. "We'll each continue searching until one of us finds the next ribbon. If you find it, use your whistle and give two sharp blasts. That will tell me to come to your position. If I find the ribbon, I'll do the same. Understood?"

"Yes sir," Melanie exclaimed with growing confidence, eyes shining and face set with determination. With that pronouncement as the signal, the pair parted ways, each moving off down their respectively chosen paths.

Moving swiftly yet carefully, Melanie glided along the trail, head constantly moving back and forth, eyes darting to examine every nook and cranny along either side of the trail, staring into every shadowy fold of the land. She had made enough stupid mistakes today, costing her and Jacob hours of lost time having to backtrack again and again. She would _not_ mess this up! Of course, she had expressed such sentiments before and that had hardly prevented her from messing things up, but that would not happen this time. It would _not_!

Roughly a kilometre down the trail, Melanie paused to take a momentary break in the search. Straightening, she reached behind with one hand to gentle knead the small of her back. It had been a long, tiring day that had started early and Melanie was beginning to feel the weight of exhaustion beginning to drag at her limbs. By her estimation, the distance they had hiked had long ago surpassed the fifteen-mile death marches she was accustomed to. Add to that the lingering weakness of her Conditioning-induced blackout and it was a wonder that she was still conscious at all. But Jacob was trusting in her ability to do this and there was no way she would ever be able to face him if she gave up due to fatigue. So, after a minute to rest and gulp back a few mouthfuls of tepid water from her canteen, Melanie set out once more.

Another half-kilometre on, Melanie pulled up short, ears straining, all of her senses suddenly on the alert. There was a faint rustling coming from further up the trail, the sounds of leaves crunching, twigs snapping and branches clacking together as they swung back and forth with a force that was contrary to the gentle breeze filtering through the forest.

Her initial thought was to dismiss the sounds as those of some passing animal; nothing to worry about. But the longer she waited, poised on the balls of her feet, the louder and more forceful the sounds grew. If it _was_ an animal making those noises, then it was a large one. Were there bears in the Italian Alps?

Melanie swallowed back a nervous lump that found itself suddenly lodged in her throat and hurriedly reached for the hunting knife hanging at her belt. The sturdy blade was as long as her hand and two finger-widths wide. It wouldn't be of much use against a bear, but hopefully her enhanced cyborg strength would make up the difference. At least, she sincerely hoped it would.

Moving a short way off of the path, she crouched down in a small hollow at the base of two trees that had grown close together. Several of the trees' roots had tangled together as they grew, forming a natural basin that allowed water to collect in as it rained. This had, in turn, allowed the soil to erode away, thus forming the shallow bowl she now used to conceal herself.

Knife in hand, she waited anxiously as the sounds grew ever closer. Sweat popped out upon her brow and began to slowly bead down her face. She tried to summon up the cold, emotionless calm that gripped every one of the agency's cyborgs upon entering battle, but her rational mind continued to intrude and disrupt her efforts. The so-called "battle mode" was meant for use against the enemies of the agency; Padania members, Mafiosi and other kinds of lowlifes. It wasn't intended for use against random woodland critters that just happened to be wandering by.

Melanie almost collapsed from relief as, after several tense minutes, the sound of approaching voices reached her ears. The voices grew in volume in tandem with the rustling and before long she was able to pick out quick snippets of conversation. It wasn't a bear or wolf or some other alpine predator; it was just a group of fellow hikers.

That realization, however, sparked a new set of concerns for the physically and emotionally wearied girl. This was the first time Melanie had ever been away from the comfort and safety of the agency's closed compound environment. The people outside of the agency's own staff she had experience interacting with were the handful of soldiers and the helicopter flight crew from that morning. She had no idea what to do or what to say to these people.

Sucking in deep, steadying breaths, Melanie tried to calm and focus her mind. Kara and Allison were two of her best friends and they had both spent tonnes of time outside in the real world, talking to and spending time with normal people. Surely they would act relatively the same around her and the other cyborgs as they did while out on missions or on vacation, right? If that were so, she reasoned logically, then all she had to was act the same way she did when with her friends and she would be fine.

Stepping out from her impromptu hiding place and back onto the path, Melanie slipped her knife back into its worn leather sheath. Composing herself as the rustling and voices drew upon her, she began walking forward, as if she were simply out for a casual stroll. Within moments the hikers came within sight.

The two men and two women who came into view stumbled to a halt upon noticing Melanie, their conversation breaking off abruptly. On instinct, Melanie's eyes darted across the four, analyzing each one for whatever potential threat they might pose. All four carried large camping backpacks slung on their backs, sleeping bags strapped tight to the bottoms. Their clothes suggested a close familiarity with the mountainous environment. Each wore a bright-coloured windbreaker that looked slightly heavier than the one Melanie herself wore and light tan cargo pants; the kind that let you convert them into shorts by removing the bottom half of each leg.

The man leading the group was thin and of only slightly above average height. His narrow face was sallow, with sunken cheeks, nearly non-existent lips and a large hatchet of a nose. Light brown hair was kept trimmed close to his scalp in a military-style brush-cut. His eyes, however, were of the clearest, most mesmerizing shade of blue that Melanie had ever seen before and they latched onto her with an almost predatory intensity, burning with a keen intelligence.

The second man and one of the women were both clearly Italian, their lighter colouring hinting at their being from one of the Northern regions; likely Milan or Venice. The second woman, hanging back slightly and bringing up the rear, sported the same kind of pale, chiselled features that she recognized from Signor Hillshire, though her hair was the colour of spun gold, her eyes a deep blue-green.

"Oh, hello there," chirped the second man, offering Melanie a friendly smile from just behind his friend, who was scowling suspiciously at her.

Nodding in greeting, Melanie returned the man's cheerful greeting, maintaining a steady pace and striding quickly past the group. She willed her nerves under control, forcing herself to keep looking forward despite the uneasy prickling she felt between her shoulder blades. None of the four had so much as a belt knife on them and she had quickly dismissed them all as potential threats. If one of them was carrying a concealed gun, however, would she be able to react in time to defend herself? The skinny man with the forceful gaze had seemed oddly distrustful of her. Could he suspect something was wrong? He could be drawing a weapon on her right that moment, her exposed back an easy target for him.

Melanie's hand instinctively twitched towards her knife and it required all of her willpower to keep from ripping it free from its sheath and spinning back to confront the group.

"Um, excuse me?" one of the women said abruptly, nearly sending Melanie shooting up into the air as she jerked, startled. With supreme effort, she whirled around only marginally faster than normal. One hand she held firmly at her side and slightly behind her; hunting knife held in a white-knuckled grip.

"Y…yes?" Melanie managed after only a couple of tries.

"Are you hiking out here all by yourself?" the woman – Melanie know saw it was the German-looking woman – asked worriedly. "I don't mean to offend you, but you look a little young to be hiking through the Alps without someone with you. Are you okay? You're not lost, are you?"

"Oh no, I'm fine; really." Melanie let out a profound internal sigh of relief at the woman's words and she hastened to assure her that she was in no danger and was right where she intended to be. The woman's concerns, however, were valid. Melanie _was_ rather young to be hiking through the mountains on her own. How was she to explain that?

A sudden wave of inspiration struck her then as memories of a brief conversation she had had with Petra some weeks ago flared to life in her mind. Melanie had been asking her fellow cyborg how she managed to keep all of the different stories that she told to different people while working straight in her mind. Petra had answered that the most effective lies, those most easily remembered and believed, where those that were grounded in as much truth as possible. Recalling something from memory, Petra had explained, is always easier than fabricating a story.

Armed with that revived knowledge, Melanie decided that there could be no story closer to the truth than the actual truth! After all, she reasoned, it wasn't as if she were doing anything wrong or overtly suspicious. So what need did she have to lie at all?

"I'm actually out here with my dad," she began smoothly, her voice hitching ever-so-slightly at the idea of calling Jacob her father. "He's teaching me how to survive in the wilderness. You know: tracking and path finding, those kinds of things? He had some friends come out yesterday and lay a pretend trail with yellow ribbons for me to find and follow. You haven't seen any while you were walking up the trail, did you?"

The two women and the Italian man all nodded their understanding before exclaiming that no, they had not seen any yellow ribbons; though they hadn't exactly been keeping an eye out for any either. Even the skinny man, who Melanie thought might from some Eastern European country, relaxed somewhat.

Oh, well, okay then. Good-bye." Waving to the group merrily, Melanie turned and continued on her way. Another thought came to her then and she stopped, turning back sharply and calling out to the four again. "Oh yeah, if you hear someone blowing a whistle in the next few minutes, that's just me and my dad signalling that one of us found the next ribbon. We split up to search down each branch of the trail to save time." Again the women and the Italian man called back that they understood, chuckling and waving their cheerful farewells.

Feeling incredibly proud of herself for having handled the situation in what she imagined had been magnificently skilful fashion, Melanie virtually floated along the rugged trail. So elated with her own success was she, that she almost flounced right past the very ribbon she had been looking for. That certainly would have been embarrassing!

Pulling out her whistle from where it hung on a string around her neck, she gave it two short, sharp blasts, listening as the piercing shrieks faded off into the distance. She then moved off to the side of the path, sitting down on a fallen log to await Jacob's arrival.

It took Jacob a good fifteen minutes to first backtrack to the fork and then make his way to where Melanie sat waiting. During that time, she spent the minutes afforded to her in quiet contemplation. She was still puzzled over what had happened during lunch, in regards to Jacob's outburst. Despite his insistence that he had not actually been angry, her womanly instincts were telling her that there was something more going on.

There was just so much about Jacob and his life before the agency that she didn't know about. For that matter, the little information she had gleaned from her friends and other agency staff members suggested that he had been a part of the SWA for some considerable time before her conversion. She knew that some handlers had been members of different departments within the agency before transferring to Section Two and becoming a handler. But Jacob wasn't a native Italian. Why would Chief Lorenzo take the risk of hiring a foreigner, if not to work as a handler?

Another thing that was bothering her was something that Allison had mentioned in passing. The morning after Melanie had infuriated Jacob by breaking curfew to hang out with Henrietta and the other First Generation girls, Allison had said something about a fellow cyborg; Monty, she thought the name had been. Melanie had never met this Monty girl, which Allison had explained was because she and her handler, Jethro, spent most of their time out of country, running information-gathering missions abroad. What puzzled Melanie, however, was Allison's own puzzlement over her not having even heard of Monty.

"I'm surprised you've never heard of her," Allison had said, frowning slightly in bewilderment. "I know for a fact Jacob has met her and I would have thought he'd at least mention her to you. Don't worry about it though. If you don't know her, then you don't know her; it's not a big deal. I'm sure she's bound to show up eventually; she must be getting close to her eighty-thousand kilometre tune-up by now."

Sighing softly, Melanie leaned back, stretching her arms high overhead to work out the kinks that had started to settle into her muscles. There were so many mysteries surrounding Jacob; knowledge that she longed to have. How could she be expected to form a close bond to him if he wouldn't tell her anything about himself? She had thought she was finally getting him to open up about himself during lunch – and she _had_ learned a few things about his past with the Canadian military – but her stupid over-eagerness had ruined things.

Resolving herself to make another attempt to learn about the man who was so important to her, Melanie rose at the sound of someone approaching. Brushing off the seat of her pants, she turned just in time to see Jacob come into view.

"You alright?" he asked upon reaching her, head swivelling to gaze up and down the path.

"Of course," Melanie replied automatically. "Why; what happened?"

Jacob shook his head, adjusting the position of his rucksack. "Nothing happened. I just ran across a group of hikers coming from this direction and wondered if you'd seen them."

"I did," she replied. "They asked me what I was doing out here alone, so I basically told them the truth; that I was out here hiking with my father and that you and some friends were helping me learn how to find and follow trails and stuff."

It wasn't until after she had finished talking that the full import of what she had just said struck her. She froze, eyes widening slightly in alarm. Telling a bunch of strangers randomly met that Jacob was her father was one thing, but to tell him to his face that she had referred to him as such was quite another! What if he took offense to her calling him dad? Some of the handlers preferred maintaining a more professional relationship with their cyborg partners and Jacob certainly struck her as being one such handler.

"And they believed you?" he asked bluntly, his voice neutral and unreadable.

"I…I guess so. I mean, they didn't bother me after that, so they must have."

Jacob grunted softly, reaching up to rub at his chin thoughtfully. "I see; well done." He glanced down at her then, seeing her slightly stunned expression. "Well? What are you waiting for? Let's get going," he barked gruffly, waving her on down the path. She hastened to comply, not missing how the corners of his mouth twitched upwards into a tiny smirk.

They kept to the search for another half-hour, just long enough for Melanie to find two more trail markers and to plot the location of the last one before they turned away from the trail to make their way to the nearest potential campsite. The site Jacob had chosen was located on the Western slope of a shallow valley, near the bottom. There were no trees in the valley; the plant life consisting purely of short alpine grasses interspersed with hardy flowers that waved gently in the breeze as it slipped over the lip of the valley and tumbled down the far slope. Rocky outcrops dotted the landscape, one of them much larger than the others, forming a low natural wall. It was to the immediate south of this outcrop that Jacob chose to make their camp. The valley wall, in conjunction with the outcrop, would serve to block out the majority of the wind.

Setting their packs aside, Melanie helped Jacob erect the small, dome-shaped three-man tent, using the full force of her cyborg strength to pound the steel tent pegs into the rocky soil. After that, they transferred their packs into the tent and Jacob sent her off to refill their canteens and to fill the lidded aluminum cooking pot from a stream near the far end of the valley.

Making the short trek there and back, Melanie allowed herself to relax and soak in the majestic tranquility of her surroundings. To the north and south, towering snow-capped peaks showed between the valley's walls. A thin haze of vapour and wind-blown ice crystals made the mountains seem to rise out of misty clouds, providing a picturesque backdrop of exquisite beauty. Her hair, which by now had begun to work its way out of the pony-tail she had pulled it back into, danced on the breeze, whipping past her face to tickle at her cheeks and neck. She spun on her heel to face back towards the campsite, relishing the feel of the wind on her face.

Closing her eyes, Melanie's mind drifted with the wind, carrying her up into the dizzying heights of the upper Alps. She soared on the powerful currents of air, the mountains zipping by below her in a blinding succession of craggy rocks and glistening ice. Dipping to one side slightly, she banked to the left, slipping into a cross-current that sent her plunging down at breakneck speeds. The side of a mountain grew to completely envelop her vision as she hurtled towards it, the wind roaring in her ears. At the very last moment, with flakes of snow and ice pelting her face, she pulled up hard and tore across the side of the mountain at near-unfathomable speeds. The bare rocky surface of the mountain flew by less than a dozen feel below her, a featureless grey blur to her eyes.

The sound of exhilarated, half-hysterical laughter reached her and Melanie pulled up further in order to slow her dive and level out into a more controlled and stable glide. Twisting around, she caught sight of her companion, her limber form seeming to dance with the clashing, conflicting air currents of the Shatter Teeth Range.

"You _are_ insane, Quinn!" Melanie's companion laughed as she drew close, having to shout to be heard over the howling winds. "Do you have any idea how much trouble we'll be in if your father finds out we're out here?"

"Then we'll just have to make sure he doesn't find out, right Nyerta?" Quinn replied with an elated chuckle of her own. "Besides, he's so busy working on the clan treaty that…"

Melanie's eyes snapped open in shock, her heart leaping into her chest. For a moment she still felt as if she were soaring high in the air, looking down upon the ground far below. An overwhelmingly powerful sense of vertigo crashed into her and she stumbled, one foot catching a projecting rock and tumbling to the ground. The canteens and cooking pot flew from her hands, the pot rolling several feet before coming to a rest on its side.

For a time she lay like that, too stunned to move. Her entire body trembled with a strange blend of excitement, terror and mind-numbing bewilderment. What in the _world_ had just happened? She could clearly remember allowing her mind to drift, soothed by the gentle feel of the wind on her face. Had she been daydreaming or…or had it been something else? The memory, if that was what it had been, was so vivid and clear. She could _feel_ the wind billowing beneath her wings, her tail snapping straight out behind, carrying her higher. She could see Nyerta's laughing face, violet eyes flashing with the combination of joy and fright that Melanie knew had been reflected in her own emerald orbs. But wait, what? Wings? Tail? That was just absurd! People didn't have wings or tails! What was going on? And Melanie's eyes were of an almost golden-yellow hue; they weren't green!

Deeply disturbed by the experience, but unable to come up with any kind of rational explanation for it, Melanie climbed back to her feet and, trying to push the memories out of her mind, collected canteens and pot and continued on to the stream.

When she returned to the campsite, she had managed to compose herself enough that, when Jacob took to now half-filled pot and set it on the camping stove, he didn't notice that anything was amiss with her. Something that she was profoundly grateful for. Melanie didn't think she would have been able to deal with any questioning on his part. The experience was still too fresh in her mind and she needed time to go over it and try to piece together exactly what had happened to her before she would be ready to try explaining it to someone else. She just prayed that her father never found out that she and Nyerta had been flying up in the forbidden Shatter Teeth.

* * *

Night fell swiftly in the valley, the darkness closing in as Jacob was fishing out their supper from the pot of boiling water. He had set the compact, collapsible camping lantern he had brought on a flat rock near the entrance to the tent earlier and its battery-powered LED's now provided a strong, steady light that illuminated the entire campsite.

Tearing open the steaming pouch in his hands, Jacob emptied its contents onto his plate. The strong spices of the tarragon chicken assailed his nose and he quickly dug into the meal. At his side, Melanie was already deeply engrossed with devouring the cheese tortellini in marinara sauce that she had picked out. Several times during the meal Jacob caught her apparently spacing out. Every now and then she would pause with her fork either halfway to her mouth or resting on her plate, forgotten, and stare at the ground, unseeing.

He had noticed that, upon her return from fetching water, there had been an oddly withdrawn feel to her. Something in her eyes made her look faintly troubled; a kind of shadowed, haunted cast that he recognized from watching soldiers who had just come out the other side of a vicious firefight, unscathed and dazed by that fact.

Initially intending to ask her about it, Jacob had noticed the scuff marks on the bottom of the pot, the dirt and grass stuck to the canteens as well as Melanie's pants. Realizing that she had probably just tripped and fallen, and was too embarrassed to admit it to him, Jacob instead let the matter slide.

"Hey Jacob?" Melanie asked suddenly, placing her fork down gently on her now emptied plate and glancing over at him. "Can I ask you something?"

"I guess," he grunted shortly.

"Do you…have you ever heard of another cyborg named Monty?" Melanie asked hesitantly, Jacob watching her out of the corner of one eye. At first, as she began to voice her question, Jacob's breath had caught in his throat, his heart jack-hammering inside of his chest. Believing that she was about to ask about Sophia, Jacob braced himself against the inevitable waves of emotional anguish that always came when he thought about the girl. Since the moment Melanie had first opened her eyes, Jacob had known that he would eventually have to tell her about her predecessor and had been silently dreading the moment.

"Monty?" Jacob blurted out awkwardly, momentarily confused. It was not the name he had been prepared for and the unexpectedness of it caught him completely off guard. "Uh, yeah; I know Monty. She's Jethro Blacker's girl. Why?"

"Just curious," Melanie replied with a dismissive shrug of her shoulders. "I just remember Allison having mentioned her. She was a little surprised that I hadn't ever heard of her. She said that you knew her and was surprised that you hadn't mentioned her to me. How do you know her?"

_Oh shit_, Jacob thought to himself. There was no mistaking the hint of cyborg jealousy lingering in Melanie's voice; regardless of how well she might think she was hiding it. This line of questioning was almost as bad as if she had asked about Sophia. He knew full well how territorial the cyborgs could be when it came to their handlers. He knew that he should tell her about how he had met Monty, and her handler Jethro, in Afghanistan; how the pair had literally saved his life from the band of Taliban guerrillas that had taken him prisoner. But, just like his memories of Sophia, the three weeks he had spent in that filthy hole wasn't a time he eagerly looked back on.

Reluctantly, however, Jacob figured that he did owe her some kind of explanation. Otherwise he would have to deal with her moodiness all the next day; that vein of poorly-suppressed jealousy tainting everything she did. "Jethro and Monty saved my life right before I joined the Agency. That's how I know them."

Still glancing at her out of the corner of one eyes, Jacob watched as Melanie's eyes popped open wide, her mouth falling open. "They…they what? What happened? Why did they need to save your life?"

_God damn it, you fucking idiot!_ Jacob snapped at himself. Why had he told her that? Now, instead of a jealous cyborg, he had a panicky, suddenly over-protective one. Why couldn't he have just said that he had been a bit of trouble and that the _fratello_ pair had helped him out? That would have been sufficiently obscure enough to satisfy without setting off warning bells.

"Look, I just told you that it was before I joined the Agency, so would you relax? It wasn't really that big of a deal."

"But…but what _happened_?" Melanie pressed, not mollified in the least by his assurances that the event had happened long before her arrival and that she was not, in any way, responsible for his having been in danger. "What were you doing that they needed to save you?"

Growing low in the back of his throat, frustrated by his own stupidity, Jacob succumbed to the realization that nothing short of a full explanation would ever satisfy the hyper-sensitized girl. "I was working in Afghanistan for a private security company. Because of my experience with the special forces, they had me running training courses out of Kandahar, teaching groups of Afghan police and soldiers how to breach and storm buildings, apprehend suspects, run VIP escort jobs; those kinds of things. We were heading back after a training run when…"

* * *

The sun burned high overhead, baking the ground below as Jacob swept his eyes across the narrow alleyway. Sweat trickled down his chest and back, plastering his khaki-coloured undershirt to his body. His Kevlar vest hung heavy on his shoulders and he shifted irritably in the vain attempt to move it into a more comfortable position. Two years spent in this desolate dustbowl of a country and Jacob was still not fully acclimatized to it. The irony was, with his father originally born and raised in Iraq, Afghanistan should have felt like home to him.

Well it didn't; and everyone else's snide, smart-assed comments could go straight to Hell! Jacob's father might have been born and raised in Iraq, but Jacob himself had been born and raised in Canada. He was more used to sprawling forests and mounded snow banks than he was to broiled wastelands and suffocating dust storms.

As if on cue, a brief breath of wind stirred up a cloud of dust that swirled down the passage, forcing Jacob to close his eyes and grit his teeth against the sandy grit. Someone coughed at his side and was quickly silenced by a sharply hissed command.

The dust devil passed and Jacob opened his eyes again, glancing about to reorient himself and make sure that nothing had changed in the scant few seconds that had passed. He then shot his hand out, making a swift chopping motion, aimed towards the doorway across the alley and about a dozen feet further up. Instantly, a squad of five dark-skinned men dressed in similar desert camouflage-patterned fatigues darted forward, their American-issued M16A4 rifles slung low and at the ready.

The five men quickly formed up along either side the door. One of the soldiers, wielding a Benelli M1014 combat shotgun rather than an assault rifle, stepped forward and, on Jacob's signal, fired a twelve-gauge slug into the door's latch, blowing it inward. The man across from him tossed in a primed stun grenade, which went off with a resounding _bang_! He then slipped into the room beyond, the other four men of his squad following behind with practiced ease.

Jacob stood back to wait, listening to the sounds of automatic weapon's fire from inside the low two-story building. Within seconds the shooting stopped, replaced by hasty calls from the soldiers, announcing that the room was clear and secured.

"Let's see how the green-horns did this time," another man said lightly from Jacob's side. Turning slightly, he favoured the man with a disapproving frown. The man stared back flatly, unfazed by Jacob's glare. Mark Corbes was a rather dour, taciturn man, hard-faced and weather-beaten from the events of his life. A seventeen year veteran of the United States Marine Core, eventually retiring with the rank of Gunnery Sergeant, Mark had seen more than his fair share of action. Now though, he and Jacob both worked as training officers for Hart International Securities.

Shrugging off the other man's half-joking comment, Jacob strode through the door, surveying the aftermath of the training run. Three of the five soldiers stood guarding the two windows and the main entrance. Three men wearing loose robes of various shades of grey and brown, the typical style of clothing most Afghan men wore, were knelt down in the center of the room, hands bound behind their backs by plastic zip-cuffs. A trio of Kalashnikov rifles, all sporting the same bright orange barrel plugs that adorned the ends of the M16's. The remaining two squad members were in the adjoining room, guarding another pair of "suspects".

Giving the order to allow the police recruits to free their compatriots, Jacob and Mark both set to the task of critiquing the soldiers' performance, pointing out what they did right, what they did wrong and where they needed to improve. On the whole, however, they had done fairly well.

"Not bad," Mark admitted reluctantly as they were all filing out of the building. The five prospective Afghan police officers and their five fellow recruits, who had been posing as the "bad guys" for this training exercise, walked ahead of the pair, weapons slung loosely at their sides.

"They do learn fast," Jacob agreed quietly, voice pitched low so as not to be overheard. "I think it's a matter of pride for them. After six years of sitting by and watching us do most of the work securing their country, it's no wonder some of them feel the need to prove themselves; especially to you Americans."

"Frankly, it's about damned time they started stepping up and pulling their own weight," Mark muttered darkly, turning aside to spit into the dirt. Jacob didn't entirely agree with the man's sentiments, but chose not to comment on it, rather than potentially start an argument with the former marine. Though the American was almost ten years Jacob's senior, he was still firmly muscled and rather well known for his violent temper.

Four lightly armoured black Hummers sat parked a short distance away, the waiting drivers starting up the vehicles' engines upon sighting the group approaching. All four drivers were decked out in full battlefield regalia, with Kevlar vests and ballistic helmets strapped tightly in place. While the designated training zone was still technically within the secured and ISAF-controlled area of Kandahar, the highly volatile and unpredictable nature of urban warfare meant that it was never possible to be too careful when conducting operations out in the public. Especially with the recent increase of intensity from both the Taliban's and al Qaeda's attacks.

Climbing into the passenger seat of the lead vehicle, Jacob rested the butt of his rifle on the floor, between his feet. He let out a soft sigh as he shut the door and the vehicle's air conditioning went to work, cooling his flushed skin and sending a pleased shiver coursing through him.

"So, where to now, Mehrandish?" the driver asked, throwing the Humvee into drive.

"Back to camp, Nathan. We're done for the day." And not a moment too soon, Jacob thought to himself. They had been out for almost five hours, running a variety of training exercises from basic room clearing to hostage rescue. He was looking forward to getting back to his company-provided hotel room and taking a bath. There were also his plans to join some colleagues from the company and a few soldiers that he'd made friends with for dinner later on in the evening.

After six years of ISAF occupation, parts of Kandahar had returned to some semblance of normalcy that hadn't been seen since before the collapse of the Soviet-backed Communist government and the resulting power struggle fought between conflicting militias, way back in the early nineties. As a result, there was a growing nightlife in the most secure parts of the city, with restaurants and clubs open for the public, long held in oppression, to enjoy.

Relaxing back into his seat, Jacob smiled at the thought of his other reason to want to go out for dinner: he hoped to see a certain woman that he been getting to know over the past few months. Khalida was in her early thirties, an Afghan native whose family had immigrated to England after the collapse of Communism in the country. A graduate of Cambridge's law school, she had returned to Afghanistan after the American takeover to work as a human rights lawyer. She had been among those involved in drafting the country's new constitution. Not one of the main people involved; her name would never be mentioned on CNN as one of those most instrumental in crafting it, but she had been involved nonetheless.

"Uh oh; what the Hell's going on up there?" Nathan said suddenly with an almost ominous calm to his voice. Jacob snapped his head up to look out the windshield and spotted what Nathan had already seen: a group of about a dozen ISAF soldiers standing just behind a barricade that blocked off the road, waving at them to stop. More soldiers, as well as members of the Afghan police force, milled around further back. They all seemed to be busy patrolling the immediate area; maintaining order and inspecting nearby buildings. It seemed there had been another insurgent attack sometime in the past two hours.

Coming to a halt a good dozen feet back from the barricade, Jacob and Nathan both rolled down their windows as the soldiers approached to either side of the vehicles. They maintained a constant watch on the surrounding buildings; crowds of men, women and children walked by on both sides, the sounds of daily life making a droning hum that filled the air.

"What's going on Corporal?" Jacob asked the man who stepped up to his window, his assault rifle clutched tightly in his hands.

"Sir, I'm going to need to see some identification," the man said flatly, raising his rifle slightly in a not-to-subtle indication that it was not a request.

Having been through this same song-and-dance routine a thousand times before in the course of his two years working in the country, Jacob calmly handed over his company ID card and weapon permits for the soldier's inspection. Three separate incidents of having his guns confiscated by Afghan police, along with all other equipment they had deemed "restricted" had inured Jacob to the habit of always carrying copies of all his permits and operator's licenses; just in case.

The situation wasn't as bad as it was for some of the smaller security contractors working within Afghanistan. Hart was a major international company, with enough available funds to make the necessary payouts that ensured that their people were left relatively alone. For the smaller companies that couldn't afford to pay the bribes, on top of the exorbitant licensing fees needed to be allowed to work inside the country, it was much rougher going. Jacob personally knew several operators who had likewise had all of their equipment confiscated by police.

The corruption running through the local government was a point of major contention with a lot of the security contractors, most of who were beginning to strongly consider pulling out of Afghanistan. Jacob had started to wonder himself if it might be time to move on to a different contract. Supposedly, there was word coming down the vine of jobs opening up in Africa that would prove to be half-decently lucrative. At the very least, it was something to think about.

"Alright, everything checks out here, sir," the soldier said, handing back Jacob's credentials. On the other side of the Hummer, he heard the other soldier doing the same for Nathan. "Sorry for the delay."

"Never apologize for doing your job, Corporal," Jacob barked on instinct. "I know how careful you have to be. Now what's going on up ahead?"

The corporal, a fresh-faced young man with the flag of England on his arm and the distinctive accents of Liverpool on his tongue, stood staring for a moment, flustered by Jacob's stern rebuke. "Uh, well…there was an attack. About an hour or so ago. A pair of suicide bombers in a car set off an explosive; killed a bunch of civilians and a couple of Yanks, not to mention almost tore down the whole bloody building they were parked besides. The entire area's cordoned off while we re-secure things and get the debris cleared away. If you're heading back to the airfield, you're going to have to detour around, I'm afraid."

Jacob nodded his understanding, having figured that something of the kind had happened. He offered his condolences for the two American soldiers killed in the blast, which received him an appreciative nod. The soldier then stepped back and, shouldering his rifle, waved them on. The other soldiers, who had progressed further down the short convoy to inspect the credentials of those in the other vehicles, marched back into view, taking up positions along either side of the road as Nathan threw the Hummer into drive and started her rolling forward again.

They turned off the main road, driving through a different neighbourhood than the one they had been in. Visually, there was nothing to differentiate the two areas of the city, but Jacob began to feel an uneasy prickling between his shoulder blades. This neighbourhood, he knew, ran along the edge of the secured zone and the detour was taking them uncomfortably close to the border. Rationally, Jacob knew that the risk of insurgent attack was only marginally greater outside the wire as it was inside, what with most of Kandahar being strongly secured. But then, that neighbourhood that had just been bombed was well within the supposed "secure zone" and that fact had not stopped the bombers. So Jacob unconsciously tightened his hold on his gun, checking with his hands to ensure that it was loaded, while he kept a vigilant watch on the surrounding crowds and rooftops.

Twenty minutes after they had encountered the roadblock, the Hummer's radio crackled to life, and Mark's gruff voice came over the speakers. There was a low, dangerous edge to the man's tone that made a cold chill slide down Jacob's spine. Leaning forward, he grabbed the radio's speaker microphone and sharply jabbed down on the "Talk" button, growing into it. "Go ahead Corbes, what is it?"

Mark was quick in responding, answering Jacob's inquiring as soon as he let go of the button. "We've got trouble, Mehrandish. We just passed by three white delivery trucks with furniture and rugs being unloaded. There was the butt-end of an RPG-7 sticking out of one of those rugs."

Jacob felt an icy shard of fear cleave through his heart, freezing him in place. He struggled to breathe as his entire body went cold and numb. Fumbling with the speaker microphone, he just managed to hit the talk button and croak out weakly, "Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm fucking sure! You really think I'd joke around about something like that?" Mark barked in vicious retort.

"No. No of course not," Jacob replied slowly. "Stand by."

Mark knew that Jacob was only expressing his shock and that he wasn't actually doubting the accuracy of what he had claimed to see.

"There are no children."

Frowning in confusion at the sudden comment, Jacob glanced back at the man who had spoken; his voice coming as a soft, eerie whisper. Both were staring out the window, fresh sweat beading on their foreheads. He then snapped his head around to glance out his own side window. At first, nothing looked out of place to him; the crowds walking by were unchanged, people going about their daily lives. A few stopped to glance at the large trucks as they rumbled past, but otherwise ignored them. Small groups of men and women clustered around market stalls and fruit stands bartered with the owners enthusiastically, shouting to be heard over the general din, hands waving expressively in the air.

The man was right though; now that it had been pointed out to him, Jacob could see that there _were_ no children in sight in either direction. It was only early into the evening, with the day's heat beginning to dissipate. There should have still been dozens, if not hundreds, of children running around and playing. But there weren't; and that fact had Jacob chilled to the bone with a creeping, anxious fear.

Reaching down between his legs, Jacob removed the barrel plug from the end of his rifle, tucking it into a pocket. He then reached forward into the glove compartment and withdrew a laminated map of Kandahar City. Unfolding it, he twisted around and thrust the map at the police recruit sitting behind Nathan, giving the man terse orders to find their position and then to be ready to relate the relevant grid coordinates. Then, twisting back around, he picked up the speaker microphone, switched the broadcast frequency to the standard military communications channel and sent a contact request to one of the main military communication centers back at Kandahar Airfield. "Zero, this is charlie-hotel-one-tree; do you copy, over?"

After a tense few minutes, during which time Nathan kept the convoy rolling forward at a smooth, steady pace, the voice of a German communications technician was conveyed over the speakers. "Copy charlie-hotel-one-tree, this is Zero; go ahead.

"Zero, be advised that we are currently located at approximate grid coordinates," Jacob paused briefly, listening as the recruit fed him a string of digits before he resumed speaking. "One-one-seven-four by six-tree-zero-two and are observing unusual activity in the area. We suspect possible insurgent activity, over."

"Roger charlie-hotel-one-tree, please confirm your location is as follows." Jacob listened as the communications operator repeated the numbers back, confirming that the man had them correct. The operator then requested a report on the suspicious activity, which Jacob gave quickly. He told about the weapons spotted being unloaded and the suspicious disappearance of all the children in the area, as if their mothers had sensed trouble coming and whisked them away to safety.

Everyone sat in complete dead silence as the seconds ticked by, waiting for the communications operator to respond. The nervous pall that hung over everyone in the vehicle was a crushing weight that set iron bands squeezing tight about their chests. Jacob caught himself flicking quick glances at the side mirror, checking to see if anything was happening back where the vans where still parked. How much weaponry and personnel could but hidden inside each of those trucks? Jacob could only speculate on the exact numbers involved, but either way, it would be enough to cause some serious problems.

"Roger charlie-hotel-one-tree," the operator replied at last, drawing a collective sigh of relief from the Humvee's occupants. "Reinforcements are en route. You are advised at this time to vacate the area. Repeat, charlie-hotel-one-tree, you are advised to evacuate the area immediately. Do you copy?"

"Roger Zero, we are evacuating the area. Over." Jacob paused for a moment to give the time for the operator to relay any further commands or information. When nothing more came however, he switched the radio channel back over to the shared convoy frequency. Quickly he relayed what had been said between him and the communications operator, telling everyone that they would be altering their route to head back towards where the recent bombing had occurred. Jacob's hope was that, after informing the soldiers on guard what was likely about to happen, they would be allowed through the barricades, where they could then park and wait for things to calm back down. Within moments, the other three vehicles in the convoy all radioed back their understanding and acceptance of the plan.

Jacob settled back in his seat, some of his apprehension draining out of him now that they had a course of action set. He still kept a firm grip on his rifle, however, his eyes constantly swivelling to keep watch on what was happening around him. He had spent too many years with the Special Forces to do otherwise.

His tentative feelings of peaceful respite were not to last. Less than a minute after he had hung up the microphone, Nathan spoke up beside him. "Hey Jacob, look up there; we've got company." Nathan barked, nodding his head towards a spot further up the road. Following the man's indication, Jacob saw that the street they were driving on ended at a 'T' junction several hundred meters ahead. Just coming into view at that intersection was the sharply-sloped front end of a LAV III personnel carrier.

The APC slowly lumbered its way through the intersection. Its roof hatch was thrown back, the machine gunner's head and shoulders visible. A second APC came into view before the first was out of sight; a third and fourth following behind, with the sounds of more that were still hidden behind the closely-packed buildings. A troop convoy heading back to the airfield from some patrol deep into the sandy wilderness.

"Jesus Christ," Jacob whispered harshly as a light of brutal realization sparked to life within him. "That's what those insurgents are targeting. It's an ambush; they're planning to come down this street and slam into the side of that convoy. Cut them right in half. They probably have flanking forces out to hit them from the front and rear first, pinning them in place."

"And they're going to roll right through us to get to them," Nathan added with a grim understanding of the situation. "Shit; we need to get the Hell out of here."

"No!" Jacob barked, throwing out one hand to grab Nathan's arm, preventing him from turning the wheel and taking them down a side-street. "The soldiers in that convoy are coming back from a week-long patrol; they're all going to be tired as Hell and probably running low in supplies besides. And there isn't anyone else in the area close enough to come to their aid."

"Fucking Christ," Nathan hissed in his own sense of dawning realization. "The suicide bombers. They were a distraction."

"Exactly. Every on-duty soldier who should have been out here on patrol is now over there, securing the scene and cleaning up the mess. Which means we're the only ones close enough to help and equipped to do so."

"So what the Hell do we do?" Nathan demanded, knuckles white on the steering wheel from the force of his grip.

Jacob had to pause for a moment to consider their options. He knew that they had to help somehow; it was the right thing to do. Were he in those soldiers' position, he knew that he would be damned grateful for their assistance. If they could keep the third ambushing force from cutting into the convoy's exposed flanks, then it might give the beleaguered soldiers enough time to fight off the initial attacks aimed at the van- and rearguard vehicles. Hopefully for a long enough period of time for reinforcements to arrive.

"Nathan, pull us off to the side of the road. We're going to set up our own roadblock and protect those boys' flank. If those al Qaeda pricks want down this street, then they're going to damn well pay for it." Nathan nodded silently and began angling the rather large vehicle over to the side of the street, pulling in to a stop as close to the building as he could. At the same time, Jacob once again picked up the radio microphone to pass the message along. "Alright people listen up: there's a convoy of ISAF soldiers coming down the road ahead of us, about to be ambushed by those insurgents we spotted and some of their friends. There's no-one else close enough to help them so we're going to do it. We're going to establish a barricade across this street using our Humvees and then dig in and prepare to fight off whatever gets thrown at us."

"Are you out of your fucking mind, Jacob?" Mark barked back over the radio savagely. "There's only sixteen of us and we're only carrying maybe three magazines' worth of ammunition each. Those trucks can probably hold a dozen men each and God only knows how much weaponry they're carrying."

"I know that Mark," Jacob retorted. "But we're still doing this. I'm not going to let those boys get cut apart because we were too big of a pussy to help them. You've got a kid in the marines, right? What if he were in that convoy?" Jacob jerked his thumb off of the talk button, waiting for the other man's response. Knowing Mark as he did, Jacob was fairly certain that the man was currently running through his extensive list of vehement and rather colourful invectives.

"God damn it Mehrandish, I left the core to get away from this shit. You know that right?"

"Then what the Hell are you doing in Afghanistan?" Jacob shot back with a small, wry grin. If Mark was finding time to bitch and complain, then he had already agreed to Jacob's plan.

"I just told you: I was a fucking jar-head for seventeen years. No-one ever said I was smart."

"And you're too damned ugly to get a job working the till at McDonalds. Right, I got ya," Jacob joked, chuckling.

The friendly banter between the two former soldiers served to help diffuse the nervous tension. Put somewhat at ease by the pair's antics, the drivers began positioning their vehicles across the road in advance of the insurgent attack. They had been driving down one of the city's main thoroughfares which meant that it was just barely wide enough for three of the lightly armoured Humvees to drive side-by-side without their wheels scraping together, or without having to gouge out chunks of brick from the buildings lining the road.

The second Humvee in the convoy, driven by a German man by the name of Stefan Semke and a former member of the Berlin police force, pulled up behind Jacob's, turning in perpendicular so that the two vehicles made a backward 'L' shape. The third Humvee was driven by Vincent Rossitto, an American who had spent almost the entirety of his professional career in one private security company or another. Vincent parked his vehicle along the opposite side of the road, several feet back from where Nathan had parked. The last vehicle in the convoy, the one in which Mark rode, parked behind Vincent's in the same general manner as Stefan had parked behind Jacob and Nathan's Humvee. The driver, a Brit named Peter Epsom, managed to position the Humvee almost completely straight across the road, with enough room between the vehicles so that several men could stand alongside and fire over the hood and roof.

While all of this quick positioning of the vehicles was taking place, the locals had taken notice and, realizing that something was about to happen, quickly began to clear out of the area. This, of course, had tipped off the insurgents who had still been busy unpacking their concealed arsenal.

"Don't look now Jacob," Mark growled as everyone was climbing out of their respective vehicles. "But I think our friends back there have just realized that their plan's gone all balls-up on them." True enough, as Jacob stared down the length of dusty roadway, he saw a group of about a dozen-or-so men milling about the delivery vans, their agitated gestures directed towards where the Humvees now sat parked across the road, barricading it off. Several of them had pulled what looked like assault rifles from amongst their cache. It wouldn't be long now before the bullets started to fly.

Moving swiftly, Jacob began directing everyone to where they would hunker down to fend off the soon-to-be charging insurgents. The four drivers, each armed with Belgian-made FN P90 submachine guns, he sent into the front and rear seats of the two forward Humvees, where they would be able to fire out through the windows. Several of the Afghan recruits had proven themselves modestly adept sharpshooters and those men Jacob sent clambering up onto the hoods of Nathan and Vincent's vehicles, where they could use the roofs to brace their rifles and thus steady their aim.

The rest of the men Jacob arranged along the sides of Stefan and Peter's Humvees. Jacob chose a spot crouched behind the wheel-well of Stefan's vehicle, with mark taking up a similar position behind Peter's, on the opposite side of the street. One of the Afghan recruits, the one who could speak the best English, Jacob sent off running towards the still passing ISAF troop convoy with a warning about the impending ambush.

Less then a half-dozen minutes had elapsed since Jacob had made the decision to help the soldiers but already the insurgents had rallied and were beginning their attack. Fully two dozen men in loose grey robes and Kevlar vests worn over short, sleeveless brown coats were now making their way down either side of the street. They darted from doorway to doorway, using the buildings and abandoned shop stalls as cover. A few began haphazardly firing towards the entrenched men, the bullets mostly going wide and impacting the surrounding walls.

A second wave of a dozen men began to spill out from behind the delivery vans, several of those carrying RPG launchers. As these men began advancing, the first group came within effective combat range and immediately let loose with a deadly hail of bullets. The staccato bursts of AK-47 fire filled the air and Jacob ducked behind the side of the Humvee as several rounds pinged off the vehicle's armour plating. There came the retaliatory rattling crack of automatic weapon's fire as the sharpshooters began trading shots with the insurgents.

Two of the insurgents dropped to the ground in that first exchange, blood spraying into the air. The pair's comrades returned fire, bullets ricocheting in all directions. There came the sound of dull cracking as several bullets found their marks in the vehicles' ballistic glass. Jacob prayed for the safety of the four men inside those vehicles as he peeked over the hood and, taking steady aim, squeezed the trigger of his assault rifle. The thick foam of his ear-protectors muffled the savage bark of the gun, the recoil of the three-round burst he had unleashed slamming the weapon's stock into the hollow of his shoulder.

All at once, a deep rumbling shudder rippled through the ground and twin explosions rent the air. Dirt and flames shot up above the roofline and a massive cloud of dust and smoke billowed outwards as a building collapsed into a heap of broken rubble. Frenzied shouting and screams filtered back from direction of the troop caravan and Jacob knew that the ambush had been launched. Now it was just a matter of holding on until reinforcements arrived and praying that they lasted long enough to see that happen.

Within minutes, eight insurgents were dead, their bullet-riddled bodies leaking blood into the dusty, hard-packed soil. Jacob fired off another burst of rounds, nodding with grim satisfaction as another insurgent dropped with a strangled, agonized scream. One of the Afghan recruits was down; a lucky shot managing to find its way between the two parked Humvees and slamming into the man's arm. A hastily-tied tourniquet had stemmed the bleeding, but he was now reduced to using his sidearm.

Realizing the strong defensive position the unknown meddlers had established, several of the insurgents had slipped into narrow alleyways between the buildings. Clearly they hoped to outflank the defenders and come at them from behind. Mark, noticing this fact, shouted out over the chattering roar and near-continuous metallic pinging that drowned out all other noises. "Nathan, Stefan; pull back and reposition into the alleys and keep those fuckers off our asses!" The two men, with their compact personal defence weapons, should be able to hold off ten times their number of assailants in those tight passages. The pair quickly crawled out of their vehicles and loped off to pick their spots to await the insurgents.

Ducking back down as a stream of bullets tore into the hood and rear of the two vehicles he was positioned between, Jacob took the opportunity to slam in a fresh magazine. The insurgents had now mostly taken up defensive positions of their own and the two forces were how reduced to trading rounds. As he peeked back up though, a chill passed through him and he jerked back down, twisting to the side to shout out loudly, "Heads down! RPG incoming!"

There was an explosive burst followed by a loud, savage hiss of burning gas. The rocket propelled grenade screamed through the air, angling high and wide as it passed harmlessly overhead. The grenade slammed into the side of a building a dozen feet behind Jacob, erupting in a fiery concussive blast that punched a head-sized hole through the wall. Shattered chunks and tiny chips of brick went hurtling through the air, raining down upon the ground below. Seconds later, there came the sharp bark of a single shot being fired from above Jacob's head. The well-aimed bullet caught the man wielding the RPG-7 square in the throat and he jerked backwards slightly before slumping to the ground with a brief fountain of blood.

A second RPG tore through the air, this one impacting the ground less than ten feet from the Humvees. It sent up a fountain of flame and dirt into the air, the booming blast and deafening roar making Jacob cringe slightly as he was pelted with falling grit and flakes of rock. Chancing a quick look, he saw a group of five insurgents using the explosion and continued covering fire from their compatriots as a distraction, the men running towards them.

"Rashim!" Jacob yelled, catching the attention of the injured Afghan. The man sprinted over, crouched low in order to stay out of sight. "There's a box of grenades in the back of the Humvee behind me. Go and get it!" All this he yelled in fluent Dari, the Afghan variant of Farsi and the most commonly spoken language in the country. Rashim, spotting the approaching group of insurgents, darted into Nathan's vehicle and in record time, re-emerged with a small, rectangular wooden box carried awkwardly underneath one arm.

Flipping open the box's lid revealed an interior space divided into twelve separate compartments. Jacob carefully removed a single hand grenade from its slot and, after checking on the quickly approaching insurgents' position, pulled the pin and lobed the grenade into the air. Seconds later, there was an explosive blast and men screamed as razor-sharp shards of steel flew through the air. All five men were down, their backs and legs shredded.

A second tossed grenade killed a pair of insurgents hiding in a deep doorway, the men collapsing in a heap with mangled, blood-smeared faces, their stomachs and sides torn open by shrapnel.

Two more RPG's whizzed by overhead, one of them finding its target in the rear armour panelling of Vincent's Humvee. Jacob felt the heat of the explosion on his face and caught sight of the two men standing directly in front of the blast get slammed forward, against the sidewall of the vehicle they hid behind. The face of the man furthest from Jacob smashed down against the vehicle's hood, rebounding back smeared with blood. Both men then slumped to the ground, unconscious or dead, he couldn't tell.

Growling with mounting anger and frustration, Jacob popped up and began firing off frenzied bursts of rounds, directed at the two men wielding the grenade launchers. Two of the bursts chewed apart one of the men's thighs and that man dropped straight to the ground, screaming in agony. Even from a distance, Jacob could see the glistening white of shattered bone jutting sharply through the ragged skin. The second man took the full brunt of the seven rounds that slammed into him dead-center in the chest, his Kevlar vest absorbing the damage and keeping him alive. The force of the blows still staggered him, forcing the insurgent back a step and making him lose his grip on the RPG-7. The vengeful report of a rifle came from above and simultaneously a puckered red hole blossomed on the man's forehead. The bullet punched a fist-sized hole out through the back of the man's skull that sprayed a gory crimson mist into the air and he crumpled to the ground.

The minutes ticked by and while more insurgents appeared to reinforce the group trying to force their way up the street, there was still no sign of NATO help incoming. Another of the Afghan recruits fell with three separate bullets to the chest and throat and he lay gasping for breath for more than a minute, bloody froth spilling from the corners of his mouth, before he bled to death.

The street was littered with the bodies of over two dozen insurgents and tiny craters from hand grenades now pockmarked the road and sidewalks. More holes had been blasted into the sides of buildings both behind and in front of Jacob's position from RPG shots gone wide. Suddenly, Mark's gruff voice rang out, calling over to him. "RPG on the roof at two o'clock!"

Flicking his gaze over, Jacob spotted the man who had managed to force a way into the building and up, onto the roof. Two more insurgents appeared and with the height advantage, they could now fire down upon the entrenched group of defenders. A stream of suppressing fire from Jacob sent all three men ducking behind the waist-high guard wall, but only momentarily. The pair of gunmen thrust their rifles up, over the lip of the wall and began firing down blindly. It was a pathetic, haphazard method, but it was enough to keep anyone else from returning fire for the few critical seconds it took for the third man to kneel up and launch his RPG.

Jacob gave an alarmed cry as the RPG exploded directly against the side of Stefan's Humvee, shoving its back-end sideways several inches. As soon as the blast faded, Jacob darted back up and fired at the roof, catching one of the gunmen and sending him tumbling and screaming over the edge. The man with the RPG-7 however, had slipped back to reload and thus escaped unscathed.

It was then that Jacob realized that it had been several seconds since he had last heard the tell-tale burst-fire from Nathan and Stefan. Confused, he turned just in time to see three insurgents dart out from an alley _behind_ their defensive line, opening fire as they did so. Their opening salvo sent a lethal hail ripping through Jacob's ranks and one of the sharpshooters went limp. Mark growled in pain as a bullet blew straight through his calf, bringing the older man to his knees.

Pulling back, Jacob inched his way around the side of Nathan's Humvee, stopping just beyond the driver's door. Leaning out, he spotted all three insurgents and clamped down on the trigger. Screaming out with a raw, primal fury, he emptied his entire magazine into the trio, who ended up laying in a tangled heap of bloodied flesh by the end.

"Vincent, Peter, go plug up that hole!" Jacob shouted while creeping over to where Mark lay half-kneeling half-sprawling on the ground. The pair jogged immediately jogged off, pausing only to grab two hand grenades each from the almost empty box.

Reaching his friend, Jacob helped Mark into a sitting position, leaning him against the front passenger-side wheel of Peter's vehicle. "We're getting fucking chewed apart out here; you know that, right? Jacob didn't deign to reply, scrambling into the back of the Humvee for a first aid kit. The battle continued to rage around him as he applied a hasty pressure-bandage to either side of the wound in Mark's leg. It was a flesh-wound, through-and-through – which was a blessing.

"Just so you know," Mark went on, wincing slightly as Jacob pulled the bandage tight. "If I end up getting killed in this shit-hole, my wife is going is going to have your fucking ass on a plate."

"You're not married," Jacob retorted sharply.

"My _ex_-wife. She's sworn that she's going to be the one to put a bullet in my head one day. You have no idea how pissed off she'll be if she finds out someone else got to me before her."

"Sounds like a charming woman. The Hell made you two split up?"

"Decided she hated being married to a marine," Mark replied with a derisive snort.

"Then why the fuck did she marry you do begin with?" Jacob asked with mildly genuine interest.

"Because I looked damned sexy in my dress blues."

Jacob grinned slightly, chuckling as he shot back with mock seriousness. "So she's blind then, I take it?"

"Fuck you Mehrandish!" Mark snapped. "You can suck my hairy white balls, you God-damned rag head!"

"I'll leave that for your next wife; but thanks anyway." Jacob retorted flippantly, just as he was finishing up on dressing Mark's injured leg. He then grabbed up his rifle and scurried back to his position on the other side of the street.

The battle wore on, growing in ferocity as both sides dug in deeper and grew more desperate to achieve their goals. The insurgents had forced their way into more buildings on both sides of the street and were now firing down from second and third-story balconies, as well as from rooftops and street-level doorways. Another of the hood-mounted sharpshooters had been killed, forcing the remaining two to climb down from their perches and take up safer positions huddled up close to the sides.

While the insurgents seemed to have run out of available reinforcements, they still had Jacob and his fellow remaining defenders outnumbered by at least two-to-one. Fortunately, Vincent had returned a short time after Jacob had finished patching up Mark's leg to inform him that, while Nathan had been killed, Stefan was alive. He had merely been forced down a different side alley after a particularly strong push from the terrorists, allowing several to slip through. Jacob nodded his understanding and sent the man back to help Stefan and Peter hold back whatever flanking force the insurgents sent.

Blessedly, relief arrived several minutes later in the form of almost a dozen ISAF soldiers from the troop convoy. Apparently, between the warnings they had received from headquarters and the warning delivered in person by the Afghan police recruit Jacob had sent to them, the convoy had managed to ready itself to repulse the ambush mere seconds before it occurred. The high-yield improvised explosives the insurgents detonated had blocked the road both ahead of and behind the convoy, but aside from that the soldiers had fared well against the onrushing gunmen. With things stabilized on their end, it was an obvious choice to return the favour to the men who had most likely saved all of their lives.

Six men and one woman hastily took up defensive positions behind the Humvees, adding their firepower to the barrage that had so far managed to hold the insurgents back. Another pair, bearing the red cross on white armband of combat medics, was busy helping move the wounded into the Humvees, where they would start treating their injuries.

Firing his last burst of ammunition into the chest of a gunman trying to creep up the street, Jacob pulled back from his spot and jogged around to the front of what had been Nathan's Humvee. A pair of soldiers immediately darted in to take his place.

Crouching behind the vehicle's front grill, Jacob reached out to shake hands with the two men huddled there. The older of the two was an olive-skinned, hard-faced Italian bearing the badge of the _Gruppo di Intervento Speciale_; Italy's elite Special Forces and counter-terrorism unit.

"I understand you I thank for stopping these _pezzo di merda_," the man said in broken English, upon Jacob's arrive.

"I suppose you could say that," Jacob replied in equally broken Italian, which earned him a good-natured chuckle from the man.

"Your Italian badder than my English, _amico_. But you sounding like from Abruzzo; why?"

"My grandmother was from Abruzzo," Jacob explained, his voice beginning to grow hoarse from having to constantly shout over the cacophony of the battle raging on all sides. "We visited her a few times when I was growing up."

"Ah, a country-man then!" the man, who introduced himself as Master Sergeant Ignazio DeFiore, exclaimed in surprised pleasure. "We be sure to save you then, eh?"

Accepting a fresh magazine for his rifle from Ignazio, Jacob reloaded and turned back to join the fight. However, what he saw upon popping his head back up to survey the situation turned his blood to ice. Several hundred meters further up the street, several insurgents were swarming around one of the delivery trucks that they had arrived in. They were loading what looked be all of their remaining rocket propelled grenades and numerous other explosive devices into the back. A pair of gunmen were tinkering around inside the cab of the truck and Jacob knew immediately what they were planning to do. "Jesus Christ, they're getting ready to launch a car-bomb at us; we need to pull back now!"

At Jacob's half-panicked pronouncement, the remaining Afghan recruits and ISAF soldiers began making a hasty withdrawl. Mark hobbled away, assisted by a fellow American soldier and the injured Rashim. Jacob, along with Ignacio and three other soldiers, delayed their retreat in order to buy the rest time to retreat to a safe distance. The insurgents on the rooftops and upperfloor balconies of course spotted the movement and realizing that their adversaries were fleeing, called out to their surviving compatriots to renew the attack and press forward all the harder.

Darting into the mouth of an alley, Jacob leaned out and squeezed off several bursts of rounds at the charging insurgents. Their return salvo forced him to duck back into the alley, where he slumped, exhausted, to the ground. His leg was throbbing painfully from where a bullet had grazed the side of his thigh. Small cuts marred his face, hands and arms from flying brick and stone chips and tiny rivulets of blood made crimson streaks in the gritty, smoky dust that caked him.

The air was thick with the acrid stench of gunpowder, explosives and blood. The numerous detonations of grenades, both thrown and rocket propelled, had set large, clouds of dust billowing outwards, making it hard to see and breathe at times.

Clawing his way back up to his feet, Jacob darted out from the alley, turning to fire back up the street as he ran. The lumbering delivery truck was now only a couple dozen feet away from the barricade and rapidly closing the distance. He noticed that all of the insurgents were pulling back and, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a man up on a rooftop shouldering a loaded RPG-7.

Even as Jacob turned to focus on the man directly, he aimed and fired. The RPG ripped through the air, trailing a stream of smoke. Straight down it flew, directly into the open back of the delivery truck. A massive concussive blast rent the air as the RPG exploded, setting off a chain reaction as all of the other grenades and explosive material ignated and detonated in turn. The blast-wave slammed into Jacob, punching him the chest with bone-jarring force, knocking all of the air from his lungs and sending him toppling backwards.

Fragments of charred, twisted steel ripped outward in all directions, the truck blown apart by the force of the blast. The Humvees were knocked sideways, forcing them away from the epicenter and tearing open a hole in the barricade wide enough for the now once again charging insurgents to pour through easily.

Struggling to climb to his feet, dazed and disoriented, Jacob fought to bring his weapon to bear. His left arm wasn't responding properly and glancing down at himself, he saw a spear of mangled steel as long as his forearm drived clean through his Kevlar vest and into his shoulder. Blood leaked down his chest in a steady stream, but oddly enough, there was a surprising lack of pain. The shock of the blast and sudden injury had clearly left him slightly numbed.

Master Sergeant DeFiore paused and turned back, attempting to make his way over to where Jacob lay sprawled on the ground, completely exposed. A hail of bullets forced the man to dive for cover, however, and Jacob twisted around slowly to face the other man. Their eyes met across the interminable chasm of the dusty street and slowly, he shook his head. Ignacio's face darkened beneath its patina of dirt and blood, his eyes hardening. His mouth twisted into a grim scowl, the other man jerked a stiff, reluctant nod. Then, firing off a burst of rounds at the onrushing insurgents, he turned and darted back towards the safety of the ISAF convoy; away from Jacob.

* * *

"So then what happened?" Melanie asked eagerly, her amber eyes shining with a rapt awe that had her leaning forward slightly. Her plate was clutched tightly in both hands, the remains of her dessert completely forgotten.

"I emptied the rest of my ammunition into the insurgents, managing to kill two more before one slipped out of the alley I had ducked into and cracked me in the side of the head with the butt of his rifle.

"ISAF attack helicopters arrived a few minutes later to chase off the rest of the insurgents and help evacuate the wounded, but some of the bastards escaped, taking me with them. I then spent the next three weeks being interrogated in a hot, filthy hole in the mountains of Northern Pakistan." Jacob fell silent, grim-faced and uncomfortable with the wash of memories and associated emotions stirred up by his reflective thoughts. Six of the ten Afghan recruits he had gone out with had ended up dead by the end of the fight, along with Nathan and Peter. A full dozen ISAF soldiers had been killed, half-again as many wounded. Along with the cost in military lives, of course, there had also been the civilian cost. Nearly a hundred Afghan nationals had been killed during the battle, almost half of those from the three major bomb blasts. Among that number had been over a dozen children.

"But what about Monty and Jethro? You didn't explain how they ended up saving you; or even _why_ they ended up saving you."

"It was coincidence," Jacob sighed wearily. "Ignacio was a member of Major Sales' team and so he knew about the SWA and the cyborg program. When he found out that I had been taken prisoner by al Qaeda, he put in a request for a rescue operation.

"As it turned out, Jethro and Monique were already operating within Pakistan when the request made its way up the chain of command. So, after explaining to them how my decision to help the convoy ended up saving the lives of a GIS team that was a part of the troop convoy, they agreed to make a detour from their mission to pull me out."

"What were they doing in Pakistan?"

Jacob shrugged, pausing to take a sip of water before replying. "Beats me. Some kind of information gathering operation no doubt. That _is_ what they do. If I were to guess, I'd say they were looking for information about the mole working inside the command structure of ISAF. Someone had tipped off al Qaeda and the Taliban about that convoy and it wasn't the first major ambush they had launched."

"Did they ever catch the mole?" Melanie asked anxiously. A strange expression settled over her face, the look of a slow, smouldering anger beginning to build up deep beneath the surface. The idea of a spy having given information to terrorists, information that had very nearly gotten Jacob killed, infuriated her.

"No idea," Jacob answered. "I imagine they did. Those two _are_ very good at what they do. Probably among the best in the world."

Draining the remainder of his cup's contents, Jacob glanced at his watch and hissed a vehement curse. It was much later than he had expected and they had to get up early in order to continue the hunt for the commandos.

"Alright, time for bed," Jacob barked, standing slowly and stretching. The muscles in his legs had cramped up and gone slightly numb and he had to take a few moments to massage feeling back into them. "I'll clean things up out here, so you just head into the tent and go to sleep." Dejected that story-time was over, Melanie nonetheless complied without complaint. She shovelled the last of her caramel-dipped apple splices into her mouth before handing her dishes over to Jacob. Rising, she then slipped into the tent, closing the flap behind her.

Cradling the dishes in one hand, holding the lantern in the other, Jacob quickly made his way over to the small stream. The temperature had dropped sharply with the sun and Jacob's breath turned to misty clouds in front of him as he worked, his hands going numb in the icy water.

Returning to their camp, Jacob packed away the camping stove and lantern. The moon was hidden behind a bank of clouds, but there was still enough residual reflection and dim starlight for him to see what he was doing and muddle through it.

Slipping into the tent, Jacob found Melanie already firmly enshrouded in her sleeping bag. The rhythm of her breathing was soft and steady, sign that she was fast asleep. She must have been about as exhausted as he himself felt to have gone under so fast.

Shaking his head and chuckling under his breath in mild exasperation, Jacob stripped out of his clothes before climbing into his own sleeping bag. The sleeping bag's stuff-sacks and his coat he bundled up into a ball and used as a pillow. Within moments of lowering his head down, he felt himself slipping away.

"Hey Jacob?"

"What?" Jacob growled, not bothering to open his eyes at the sound of Melanie's soft, hesitant whisper.

"If I had been your partner back then, I would have killed all of them. No terrorist would ever have dared hurt you if I had been there."

Something in her voice; some hard, menacing edge of vengeful malice lurking just beneath the surface made Jacob twist about to glance over at her. His breath caught in his throat as he found her staring at him, golden eyes open and glowing softly in the near pitch-blackness of the tent's interior. For the briefest of moments he thought he saw hints of something passing behind her eyes. For the briefest of moments, it was as if a completely different person had been staring out of Melanie's eyes; watching him.

"I know that Melanie," he answered quietly with a complete seriousness that surprised him. Something about that strange light made Jacob certain that, regardless of her failings and her complete inability to master the use of any kind of firearm aside from her sniper rifle, she could indeed have killed every single one of those al Qaeda insurgents. "Now, good night."

"Good night Jacob."


	15. Chapter 14: A Plan Unfolds

Chapter 14: A Plan Unfolds

Pale, grainy sunlight filtered in through the tent's thick canvas roof, brushing across Jacob's face and eliciting a softly rumbling groan. Stirring and shifting within his heavy sleeping bag, he winced as muscles still wearied from the previous day's long hours of hard hiking sent shards of dull pain throbbing throughout his body.

A deep, wracking yawn made Jacob's jaw crack loudly and he had to grit his teeth against the tightly knotted ball of pain that flared to life in his leg as he stretched them out. It was a long litany of old aches and pains that plagued him every morning; unwelcome souvenirs of his violent past. The most recent addition to the list, and one that had been growing in its frequency, was entirely self-inflicted.

Groaning softly, Jacob pressed one hand tight to the side of his head, which was pounding in a steady cadence alongside each rhythmic beating of his heart. It felt as if some wild animal was clawing at the inside of his skull, attempting to dig its way out from behind his eyes. His tongue felt swollen to twice its normal size and wrapped in a thin layer of bristling fur besides. And to cap off the list of ailments and injuries, his stomach was churning away nauseously, filling Jacob's mouth with the ever-so-pleasant acidic taste of rising bile.

_Well __that__'__s __just __fucking__ perfect,_ Jacob growled silently to himself, cursing his own self-destructive stupidity. _Waking __up__ with __a__ hang-over__ is__ just__ what __I __need._

Raking his hair back, out of his eyes and squinting against the painful glare, Jacob shifted and rolled over onto his other side. Or at least, he tried to. Halfway there he felt something press tight up against his back and there came a muffled, unintelligible muttering from the opposite side of the tent.

Craning his head around, Jacob glanced over to find Melanie curled up into a ball, tightly cocooned in her sleeping back. Sometime during the night, she had snuggled right up next to him and was now nestled in the small of his back. He could just make out the top of her head from where it poked out from her sleeping bag, red-gold hair tousled from sleep.

Despite the misery being inflicted upon him by his hangover, it was a struggle to maintain a stern visage as Jacob pulled far enough away from Melanie to finish rolling over. Her lips, compressed into a slightly pouting frown, twitched and writhed faintly, occasionally letting slip gentle mewling sounds. Her eyes shifted and darted beneath their tightly-closed lids as she dreamt.

Gazing down at her, Jacob could just make out the still damply glistening tracks left by tears sliding down her soft cheeks. Even as he watched, fresh tears welled up and slid free, rolling down her face to further dampen the fabric of her tightly bundled coat. Despite the myriad problems that plagued their relationship and served to keep that wedge fixed firmly between them, Jacob was helpless against the feelings of sympathy that surged to life within him. He was struck by an almost overwhelming desire to do something, anything, to reach out and take away her pain. Many were the nights he had spent silently stroking Sophia's hair as she trembled and wept, caught in the throes of the omnipresent nightmares that all of the cyborgs suffered.

The price of surrendering to those impulses, however, Jacob knew to be too high. He knew what manner of demons lurked at the end of that road. Nothing would ever convince him to walk that road, to expose himself to that pain again.

Nudging her aside to give himself room to move, Jacob slowly rose and dressed quickly, shivering slightly in the chill morning air. He then turned back to Melanie, crouching down and reaching out to gently shake her awake. "Hey, wake up; it's morning."

Melanie's eyes fluttered open weakly and she lifted her head to stare up at him blearily. Locks of hair hung down over her face, obscuring her view and she reached up lazily with one hand to rake them back. "Ohayō no otōsan."

Jacob flinched back at her mumbled greeting, frowning down at her with a mixture of wonder and worry creasing his face. She was clearly still half-asleep; dreaming of her old life if the use of her native Japanese was any indication. And judging by the peaceful, almost happy tone of her voice, she was dreaming of a time before whatever nightmarish Hell had brought her to Italy and, ultimately, to the Social Welfare Agency. He almost wished that he could leave her to her dreams.

Knowing that she was still lost in the hazy in-between world of old and new memories, Jacob thought it wisest to say nothing in response. Until she fully awoke, there was no telling how much of her was Melanie and how much was the girl she used to be. Given the traumas she had experienced, she likely wouldn't react well to being confronted by a man she only half-recognized.

Before long, Melanie gave a tired yawn and reaching up to rub at her eyes. Blinking up at Jacob, she gave a slowly spreading smile that lit up her entire face. "Oh, good morning Jacob. What time is it?"

"Quarter after six," Jacob grunted, glancing briefly at his watch to check. "Now get dressed; I want to be packed up and ready to leave in an hour." He wasn't seriously expecting to be able to keep to that schedule, but one of the lessons he had learned in life was that you always set deadlines earlier than you actually wanted, just to give that extra impetus to hurry things along.

Tying the laces to his boots, Jacob was just preparing to exit the tent when Melanie gave a sharp, shuddering yelp of alarm that drew his attention. Twisting back around, he found her kneeling half out of her sleeping bag, eyes wide with arms wrapped tightly about her chest. Stripped down to just her underwear, Melanie's creamy-white skin was pebbled in gooseflesh and she was already beginning to shiver uncontrollably. "It's s-so c-c-cold!" she stammered, teeth chattering in the chill.

"We're in the middle of the Italian Alps in early spring and it's only six in the morning," Jacob replied in a somewhat dry, amused tone. "Of course it's cold. The faster you get dressed, the faster you warm up."

"Y-y-yes, s-s-s-sir."

Chuckling to himself beneath his breath, Jacob half-turned back to the tent flap before he was struck by a sudden realization. Turning slowly back around a second time, he felt his mouth drop open slightly and he goggled at Melanie in confused wonder. "Melanie, what the Hell are you wearing? Where did you get those?"

Frozen in the act of pulling on her pants, Melanie stared over at him, eyes darting in panicky confusion. "What…what do you mean?" she asked nervously, huddling in on herself self-consciously.

"You know damned well what I mean; where did you get…get…those?" he demanded, feeling suddenly awkward and flustered as he struggled against the rising tide of heat suffusing his face. He flung out one hand as he talked, waving haphazardly towards her, indicating the lace-trimmed red and gold silk bra that Melanie had on.

"Oh, you mean this?" Melanie asked with feigned innocence, plucking at the lace edging of one cup.

"Yes, I mean that!" Jacob barked angrily. "They're the only damned things you're wearing! Now where did you get them?"

He could feel his face flaming, realizing too late that he should have just kept his mouth shut and left the issue alone. What difference did it make to him what kind of lingerie Melanie chose to wear and where she got them? His only hope was that the dim light of the tent's interior was obscuring her view of him enough that she didn't notice. Or, if she did, that she would simply take it as a product of his growing anger and frustration.

Finally Melanie replied, looking both sheepish and confused. "Kara bought them for me."

"Kara bought them?" Jacob replied flatly, his face going still. "Well that was awfully generous of her. Why would she do that?"

Melanie shifted around on her sleeping bag, looking decidedly more uncomfortable by the minute. "Well, I was talking with her and Lucy and some of the other girls and…well, actually they were kind of teasing me about it, but Lucy was talking about how the only kinds of underwear I have are plain white or sport bras."

"And?" Jacob prompted stiffly when she fell silent, her eyes downcast and refusing to meet his gaze.

"And, well, they said that every girl should have at least one set of nice, fancy lingerie to help make them feel pretty." Melanie fell silent then, her face taking on a look of exasperated bewilderment. Shrugging her shoulders dismissively, she went on. "I really didn't see what the big deal was; it didn't matter to me but Kara insisted on volunteering to buy me a set the next time she went out shopping with Michele."

"I…I see," Jacob muttered, sighing inwardly. He had been right: he most definitely should have just kept his mouth shut. Leave to Pagani's girl to spend more money than most average families paid for a month's rent on what she saw as nothing more than a simple gift for a friend.

Jacob didn't begrudge Kara's abilities as an operative; she was just as capable in battle as any of the other cyborgs. Not to mention that, with Michele's influence and teachings, she had developed a remarkably keen sense of political acumen, making her by far the best choice out of the Agency's other cyborgs for diplomatic protection missions. The girl could blend seamlessly into a crowd of diplomats and dignitaries, indistinguishable from the rest. None would ever suspect the pretty, willowy half-Asian young woman to be capable of fighting off any would-be assassins with the same level of skill that she used to engage in witty repartee.

But she had absolutely zero sense when it came to the value of money. Kara's extravagant spending habits were a running joke among the personnel in Section Two, but Jacob had never found it amusing. Having been raised in a lower-middle-class working family, there had been more times than he could count when they had felt the financial pinch of having barely enough to make ends meet. To see the flippant ease with which she tossed around small fortunes as if they were leaves in the wind both disgusted and infuriated Jacob.

Something in Jacob's expression must have changed, as he was broken from his brooding reverie by Melanie calling out hesitantly, her voice tinged with nervous concern. "Jacob, what's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," he snapped back, somewhat sharper than he had intended.

"I can give the set back to Kara if you don't like it; I don't mind."

Sighing, Jacob scrubbed one hand down his face. The combination of his lingering hang-over and the frustration of the conversation where giving him a pounding headache. _God,__it__'__s __too __damned__ early __in__ the __morning __for __this __kind __of __shit,_ he thought to himself. Aloud he said, "You don't have to give the set back, Melanie; I honestly couldn't care less about what kind of underwear you have on."

"Then why are you upset?"

"I am not…" Jacob began, his throbbing skull twisting his retort into a savage bark. He pulled himself up short, taking several deep breaths to compose himself before attempting to continue. "Do you have any idea what that lingerie set cost Kara to buy?"

Frowning momentarily in thought, Melanie eventually shrugged her shoulders, saying, "I don't know; twenty Euros, I guess?"

"Twenty Euros?" Jacob exclaimed, half-choking on an incredulous laugh that he had to frantically strangle and shove back down. "No, Melanie, they did not cost twenty Euros. They probably cost somewhere closer to three _hundred_ Euros."

Watching her closely, Jacob watched as Melanie's face slowly transformed into an expression of outright shock and horrified disbelief. Her eyes bulged wide, her mouth falling open. He could practically see the wheels spinning and grinding inside her head as she struggled to grasp and comprehend what had just been said.

"Three hundred Euros?" Melanie squeaked shrilly, her hands flying to the lace-trimmed cups of her bra. "For _underwear_? That's…that's insane!"

"Yes, it is," Jacob muttered darkly.

"But why would anyone pay so much money for underwear? That doesn't make any sense." Melanie stared down at herself, at the fancy lingerie she wore, with an expression of scornful astonishment.

"Because people are idiots," Jacob replied wearily. "Because, like Kara told you, they make women feel pretty and they make men act like drooling retards."

"Well I _can__'__t_ keep them now," Melanie exclaimed in panicky distress. "There's no way I can accept these. There _has_ to have been a mistake; Kara must not have known what she was doing when she bought them, must not have realized…"

"Melanie, stop it!" Jacob barked suddenly, cutting off her hysterical gibbering in mid-stream and drawing her eyes to him. "There was no mistake. Kara knew exactly how much she was paying for those when she bought them; she just didn't care how much they cost."

"But…but why?"

"Oh, come on Melanie," Jacob said derisively, folding his arms across his chest and fixing her with a pointed stare. "You're friends with her. You can't expect me to believe that you've never heard any of the jokes about her."

"You mean about how she likes she spend Signor Pagani's money?" she asked hesitantly.

Jacob nodded firmly, his voice becoming hard and critical as he talked. His face darkening slowly as his gaze turned inward. "Exactly. Kara is the most irresponsible person I have ever met, when it comes to money management. I would bet every dime I have that you could buy a good-sized house for the amount of money that's tied up in her wardrobe. She's probably spent more money on underwear than most people spend buying a car.

"And Michele is just as bad as she is. I remember one time when Marisa accidentally set his Lamborghini on fire, completely destroying it, and he just shrugged it off like it was no big deal and bought another one."

"Well, if he could afford to replace it, why shouldn't he be allowed to?" Melanie hesitantly asked.

"He can buy as many cars as he wants; that's not the point," Jacob retorted sharply. "The point is that he acted like he didn't care that he had just lost a two-hundred thousand Euro supercar. He should have been angry; he should have been upset. Instead, he acted like the car meant nothing to him."

"But it's just a car," Melanie argued, clearly not understanding what had Jacob so irate.

"It is _not_ just a car! Those kinds of cars are status symbols; not just of wealth, but of accomplishment. Ninety percent of the people in the entire world will only ever _dream_ of owning a Lamborghini or a Ferrari. And the majority of the few who _do_ end up buying one have spent their entire lives busting their asses to save up for it. Cars like that represent a fulfillment of lifelong dreams; they're the final goal people spend decades working towards. And for Michele to act as if he had just knocked over a glass of water is not only an insult to the car itself, but a spit in the face of every person who has grown up idolizing everything that those cars represent. And it pisses me off." By the end of his ranting, he was more venting his own private feelings and frustrations than he was lecturing to Melanie. His heart was pounding, his body trembling with pent-up anger. He could feel the veins in his neck throbbing and had to consciously restrain himself and calm down.

For a time afterwards, neither one of them said anything. Jacob maintained a brooding silence, while Melanie stood wrestling with her thoughts. "You…you don't like them, do you? Kara or Signor Pagani," she eventually said dejectedly, seeming to deflate slightly, drawing inward on herself. "I understand. I'll…I'll stop being friends with her if you want."

The crushing weight of disappointment and despair in Melanie's voice tore Jacob's attention away from his frustrations and forced him to refocus on his cyborg. Looking at her, studying her expression and body language, he could see how miserable she was and cursed himself savagely. He should have known better than to vent personal opinions about fellow agency personnel in front of his cyborg. He knew full well how serious they could take things of that nature. He had made the same mistake before, with Sophia.

It had been only a few months after they had begun working together. Jacob and Lupa, a fellow handler, had had a difference of opinion on the planning of a joint mission. While out on the firing range one day, they had gotten into a rather heated argument on the subject, close enough for their cyborgs to overhear. The next day, and for nearly a week afterwards, Sophia and Gattonero had been cold death towards one another.

"You don't have to stop being Kara's friend," Jacob reassured her, massaging his temples with both hands and trying to keep his headache from cracking his head wide open.

"But I thought…"

Jacob snapped out, cutting her off sharply. "I know what you thought and you thought wrong. Now just shut up and listen. And sit down. And for God's sake, would put your damned clothes on before you freeze to death!" Blushing furiously at the realization that she was still standing around in just her bra and panties, Melanie scrambled into her clothes before plopped down on the floor of the tent, wrapping her sleeping bag around herself for extra warmth.

Crouching down across from her, Jacob took several deep breaths to compose himself and order his thoughts before beginning. He chose his words carefully, speaking slow and clear to insure that he got his point across. The last thing he needed was Melanie starting a feud with Kara because she thought their handlers hated each other.

"I'll admit that there are certain aspects of Michele's personality that gets on my nerves. But I can say the same thing for pretty much every single other handler in Section Two. They all have quirks that occasionally piss me off but that doesn't mean I don't like them. Sure, Michele can be a pretentious jack-ass at times, but I still respect the man as a colleague and as a friend."

"I…I think I understand," Melanie said slowly, nodding to herself.

"Do you?"

"Yeah. There are some things that Lucy does that annoy me; like how she listens to the same songs over and over again when we go to bed and the way she sometimes forgets to wear her headphones when playing her computer games and has the volume cranked, or how she sometimes leaves her computer parts all over the room and I have to move them around in order to do my homework or clean my rifle. But she's still my room mate and my best friend."

"Yes, exactly," Jacob said, heaving a silent sigh of relief. "In that case then, this conversation is done. So finish getting dressed and then start packing up your gear. I'll go boil the water for breakfast." Melanie nodded her acceptance and then went to work.

Breakfast was a simple affair of oatmeal, small square loaves of ration-pack bread that, while still soft, tasted as though they had been baked and packages at some point just prior to the outbreak of the Vietnam War, and cups of coffee. The caffeine worked wonders at soothing Jacob's pounding skull, to the point that, by the time they were finished striking camp and heading out of the valley, he felt almost alive again.

Upon reaching the last marked point in the commandos' trail, Melanie immediately set about the hunt with a renewed intensity. It seemed obvious to Jacob that she was working hard to redeem herself and make up for the time she had wasted the previous day. While frustrated by the time lost, he couldn't really fault her for making mistakes. This _was_, after all, her very first training exercise on wilderness tracking. This was precisely the time when she should be making mistakes, rather than when their lives might be on the line.

The pair quickly settled into a quiet rhythm as they trudged up and down through the forests and rocky slopes. The morning wore steadily on, the rising sun hidden for the most part behind scudding banks of clouds. The breeze was cool and damp, promising rain sometime in the near future. Whatever weather system that might have been bearing down on them was concealed by the towering peaks rising on all sides, but Jacob hoped that if it was going to rain, that it would hold off until they were finished and on their way out of the park.

Sudden voices drifting on the breeze caught Jacob's attention and he perked up, smiling to himself in satisfaction and relief. He recognized the raucous cries and barking laughter that was filtering through the trees and he hastened his pace slightly. Melanie, having picked up the sounds several minutes earlier, had been hesitant to approach, worried that it might be another group of hikers and not wanting any more awkward encounters. But upon seeing Jacob's eagerness, she must have realized suddenly what the voices meant and who they must belong to, as she also quickened her step to keep pace.

Within moments Jacob stepped clear of the trees into a broad valley. There, set back in a deep fold in the valley floor, was the commandos' encampment. A small, narrow lake sat hunkered on the far side of the valley, fed by a pair of streams curling between the humps and ripples in the land. One of the commandos, sitting on a folding army-green canvas camp chair, spotted the pair approaching and waved out in greeting. Jacob, waving back, strode up to the edge of the camp, clasping hands with the four men who all rose up to welcome him.

"I was starting to wonder if you planned on showing up at all," one of the commandos joked lightly, shaking Jacob's hand in a firm, confident grip. Slightly older looking than the other three men, Luciano Cagnani was a marshal in the GIS with almost ten years of experience with the unit. He was a squat and compact man with the typical olive-skinned complexion of Southern Italy. As one of Major Sales' right-hand men, Luciano was closely involved in all of the collaborative training between the GIS and the SWA. Jacob had worked closely with the man when he first started with the agency and they had become rather good friends and comrades over the few years since.

"Yeah, well, it was such a nice day yesterday that I decided to do some sightseeing while we were up here," Jacob retorted glibly. The commandos all chuckled at the small joke, turning their attention from Jacob to the lithe-looking girl huddled nervously at his side.

"So this is the new girl, eh?" Luciano asked, nodding towards Melanie.

"She is," Jacob replied, nodding. He made quick introductions, the four commandos nodding their greetings and reaching out in turn to shake Melanie's hand. Aside from Marshal Cagnani, there were Lance Corporals Marcelo Riemma, Angelo Vecchione and Raphael Galaezzi. All three were fairly tall, well built men; Marcelo and Raphael sporting darker colouring similar to Luciano, Angelo somewhat lighter of complexion and hair colouring that spoke of a more Northern heritage. The trio were all members of one of the dedicated sniper teams maintained by the GIS.

After Jacob had introduced Melanie to everyone, they all settled down at the small fire that was burning merrily at the heart of the camp. Angelo, the youngest of the four, dug into his pack and withdrew half-a-dozen small foil-wrapped bundles that he proceeded to carefully nestle into the deeply glowing coals.

"Since you're here, we might as well take an early lunch," Angelo explained, flashing an almost mischievous grin. "I hope you two like hobo dinners."

* * *

Melanie popped another chunk of diced potato into her mouth, savouring the spicy, butter-drenched taste as it washed across her tongue. She cradled her hobo dinner in her lap, the tinfoil wrapping peeled back until it formed a makeshift bowl. Inside, the potatoes, vegetables and hamburger meat steamed, soaking in the homemade marinara sauce that Marcelo's wife had prepared. She hadn't known quite what to expect from the small bundles Angelo had slipped into the fire at first, feeling both curious and apprehensive about the strange name. But now that she was half-way through and fast on her way to finishing, all fears and reservations on her part were gone.

She sat listening to the commandos chatting amongst themselves, smiling softly at the natural, easy-going camaraderie between Angelo, Marcelo and Raphael. It wasn't overly surprising, given that the trio had been working together in the GIS for several years. She idly wondered what it was like to be so closely bound together by the kind of fellowship that only comes from shared experiences on the fields of battle. Moreover, she wondered bitterly if she would ever get the chance to find out.

Every few seconds, she glanced up, peering over the heads of the commandos to the spot in the tree line where Jacob had vanished from view. On Marshal Cagnani's advice, Jacob had decided to phone the agency to update them and let them know that they would soon be on their way home. Because of the surrounding peaks, getting a clear satellite signal was difficult, forcing him to have to hike up the mountainside a short ways. She was slightly anxious about the inevitable performance report and the no-doubt critical appraisal Signor Croce would give.

"So how did you like our little game?" Angelo asked suddenly, interrupting her thoughts and pulling her attention over to where he sat next to Jacob's empty seat. "Did you enjoy yourself?"

"Yeah, actually, I really did," Melanie replied, nodding emphatically. "It was pretty fun once I got the hang of things and knew what I was doing. Well," she added pausing slightly as her voice fell to a more melancholic tone. "Except for when I almost fell off the side of that mountain; that wasn't much fun."

"Oh yes, that," Angelo muttered, his own face falling at being reminded of the ill-conceived false trail.

"Again, we really are sorry about that," Raphael added from where he sat to Melanie's immediate right.

Marcelo piped up then, the livid scar running up the side of his throat making his voice a gravelly rasp. "Yeah, it was only supposed to be a little detour to trick you; teach you not to just blindly follow a trail."

"Well it worked," Melanie replied somewhat bitterly. "I _did_ end up learning that lesson. And it's not your fault; I wasn't really paying attention to where I was going."

"No, you were not," Luciano stated flatly, earning reproving looks from the other three men that he pointedly ignored. "Neither of you were paying attention to where you were going; so I guess our little detour ended up teaching you two valuable lessons. There's something to be said for that."

"I guess so," Melanie agreed sombrely.

Glancing about the circle, she saw that everyone's moods had slipped and decided that a tactful change of subject was required. "So when can we arrange another training exercise like this one?"

All four men glanced at her, blinking several times in mild wonder. Then, after several seconds, Angelo burst out laughing, relaxing back in his chair and shaking his head slowly. "We're barely finished _this_ exercise and you're already looking to plan the next?"

"So she's eager to keep learning and continue her training; what's wrong with that?" Marcelo retorted lightly, a small grin curling his lips.

Throwing up his hands in a mock-defensive gesture, Angelo barked out laughing, "Nothing, nothing. Just remember that we mere mortals can't keep up with your cyborg stamina, alright?" The last he directed at Melanie, throwing her a sidelong glance.

"I'll try to remember that," Melanie giggled in reply.

She cut off her laughter abruptly as Luciano, after clearing his throat loudly to catch everyone's attentions, continued. "To answer your question though, it will probably be at least a couple of weeks before we can get the free time to do this again. We're on deployment stand-by for the next two weeks."

"Next time, we'll see about planning something closer to your agency headquarters," Raphael said thoughtfully. "As much as I love being in the Alps, it limits our training options."

"What do you mean?" Melanie asked curiously.

"In mountains like the Alps, unless you're an expert mountaineer and happened to bring full climbing gear with you, there's only so many passes and valleys to pick from when trying to cross," Luciano explained calmly, prompting a chorus of nodding heads from the other commandos. "Once you know enough about the terrain to be able to predict where your quarry can and can't go, it's pretty easy to anticipate where they _will_ go."

"But in older mountain ranges, like the Apennines," Raphael picked up again smoothly, continuing on with hardly a break. "As long as you're physically fit enough to do some rough hiking, you can go virtually anywhere, in any direction. It makes your job as a tracker much harder, which means it makes for much better training opportunities."

"I see," Melanie said softly, her lips curled into a slight frown and her brows furrowed in consideration of their words. "That does make a lot of sense."

After several moments of silence had passed, the conversation shifted back to more innocuous topics, the commandos talking amongst themselves once more. Melanie's attention drifted back to watching out for Jacob's return, her eyes slowly scanning the tree line. However, no matter how hard she fought to keep her focus, her gaze was invariably drawn, again and again, to the scars upon Marcelo's face and neck. Without a doubt they were the lasting mementos of some past battle, one that he had been lucky to survive. The scars were a poignant reminder to her that these men were all battle-scared veterans. Between the four of them, they had likely been fighting longer than she had been alive. They were, each of them, heroes in their own rights. It was more than slightly awe-inspiring for Melanie to find herself sitting beside men such as these. It left her wondering, with no small amount of self derision, how she was in even the slightest bit worthy to share their company.

"I got them during the Power Plant battle at New Turin."

Melanie started, blinking dazedly at the realization the Marcelo had spoken to her. All of the commandos were looking at her. Suddenly frantic, her face beginning to heat, she stammered out a hasty apology. "Oh God, I'm so sorry; I didn't mean to stare, I was just…I mean…"

Marcelo shook his head, waving his hand in a dismissive, placating gesture. "No, it's fine; don't worry about it. Must be kind of strange for you to see scars like these, huh? Any injury you cyborgs suffer gets repaired without a trace; like it never happened at all."

Melanie didn't say anything for a time, Marcelo's words sending her mind reeling back to a remembered conversation around a cafeteria table. Lowering her gaze until she stared at the ground between her feet, Melanie spoke softly, a small, wistful smile slowly playing across her lips. "That's not true. We cyborgs have plenty of scars. You just can't see them."

The silence that followed her declaration hung like a heavy shroud upon the circle, until finally, with a heavy, wearied sigh, Luciano replied simply. "Fair enough."

Feeling suddenly guilty over having thoroughly killed the relaxed, happy mood, Melanie decided that pressing on with a slight change of topics was in order, rather than allowing everyone to brood. Clearing her throat awkwardly, she shifted her gaze back towards Marcelo saying, "So you were at the Power Plant battle?"

"We all were," Raphael replied simply. "Practically the whole until was called in to assist in that fight."

"And God, what a fight it was, too," Angelo added wistfully. The other commandos nodded, adding their own simple words of agreement.

"New Turin was one Hell of a scrap, that's for sure," Luciano said. "But if nothing else, it was the day you girls proved, once and for all, your worth as soldiers."

"Why, what happened?" Melanie asked eagerly, now alert and excited to hear more.

"You don't know?" Angelo remarked incredulously, his words of disbelief echoing the expressions of the other commandos. "I would have though every one of you girls would know all about New Turin."

Melanie squirmed slightly in embarrassment, feeling as if she had been caught not having finished an important homework assignment. She tried to defend herself, stammering out weakly, "Well, I know the basics of the battle; that Giacomo Dante took over the power plant, threatening to detonate a nuclear weapon and that the agency, along with the GIS, defeated him. It was the battle that ended with Dante's death; the battle that was _supposed_ to end the war with Padania, but didn't."

"And that's it? You were never told about everything you cyborgs did to secure our victory?"

"Not really," Melanie said, shrugging offhandedly. "Most of my friends were either deployed elsewhere, or else hadn't even been adopted by the agency yet."

"Ah, well, I guess that does makes sense," Angelo conceded. "I _do_ remember hearing that the SWA went on something of a recruitment blitz after the battle at New Turin."

Raphael chuckled, nodding knowingly as he took a long pull from his can of beer. "Yeah, there's nothing like stopping a psychopathic terrorist from setting off a nuclear bomb to boost budget numbers." Angelo and Marcelo both laughed at that, bobbing their heads in agreement.

"In any case," Luciano growled with the faintest hint of long-suffering patience tingeing his tone. "If not for your sisters, we would have been slaughtered. It's entirely thanks to them that we ended up winning that fight." He went on to relate the more detailed events of the battle for the New Turin nuclear power plant. About how, when pinned down by an enemy IFV, Fleccia and Soni managed to flank the heavily-armoured vehicle and topple a construction cane, crushing it and saving their teams' lives. He also told about how Petra and Sandro single-handedly succeeded in taking back the plant's main control room, where Dante's second-in-command was stationed with the nuclear bomb. Using every ounce of his interpersonal skills, honed from years of espionage work, Sandro had talked the man down from detonating the bomb long enough for Petra to slip inside and subdue him.

Finally, last but far from least, he told her the tale of how Triela, after being critically wounded while attempting to infiltrate the plant through the maintenance tunnels, made a valiant last-stand, holding off successive waves of Padania reinforcements. If not for Hilshire's having gone back for her, in clear defiance of his orders, she would have been killed in that tunnel. Even then, in the smouldering aftermath of the battle, when personnel could be spared to do a detailed search of the facility, they were found in what they must have assumed to be their final embrace, the broken bodies of Dante's soldiers laying literally at their feet.

"There were more than two dozen Padania corpses down in that tunnel," Luciano explained with a grim solemnity, "If not for those two, those reinforcements would have been able to flank us and cut us to pieces."

"They saved our lives," Marcelo intoned with an equal measure of sombreness. "And probably won us the battle. They bought us the time we needed to secure the bomb and remove it from the battlefield."

"That's amazing," Melanie breathed quietly after a time, once she was able to find the strength to speak into the heavy silence that followed the end of Luciano's revelations. "Even Petra's done things that make her a hero." She left unsaid her original, now shattered, impressions of Petra being little more than a pretty bimbo. "And just when I think I've heard about every incredible thing Triela's ever done, I find out that she's done something else even _more_ incredible."

Melanie felt a distinct sinking sensation dragging at her insides as a wave of dismay settled down around her. All of her fellow cyborgs, the more senior ones at least, had such astounding lists of accomplishments to their names. How could she _ever_ measure up to them? What gave her the right to even try?

"Hey, cheer up," Angelo said brightly, having noted Melanie's rather crestfallen expression. "There are still plenty of terrorists and Mafiosi for you to kill and get in on the glory."

Glancing over at the man in surprise, Melanie gave a quiet, bitter laugh, shaking her head sadly. "I'll settle for just being allowed to do my job. Never mind glory."

"Well, that's what you have us for," Raphael said, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. "We're here to teach you everything we know about tracking enemies through the wilderness, and that's something I know for a fact that not even the great Princess of Section Two has ever done before."

Melanie scoffed, sniffing lightly in amused scepticism. "Are you sure about that? I wouldn't put it past Triela to have hunted an escaped Padania suspect through the Alps, just for something to do."

Angelo opened his mouth to offer a retort, but broke off abruptly as Melanie perked up, ears straining and eyes staring fixedly upon the tree line. She had heard something rustling, and as the commandos turned to follow her gaze, she caught sight of Jacob emerging, his strong, measured stride carrying him swiftly back to the campsite.

Her initial burst of relief at his return was quickly dashed by the dark, stony expression chiselled onto his face. Clearly his report back to headquarters had not gone well and that had Melanie feeling nervous. A frenzy of fearful thoughts churned inside her head and she began to shift and squirm in her seat anxiously. She didn't think she had performed _that_ badly during the exercise. Unless it had to do with her black-out. The second time within a week, would it be enough to make Chief Lorenzo to give in to Jean's demands that she be re-conditioned, or worse, decommissioned?

Melanie's heart thundered wildly, pounding out a deafening cadence against her ribcage. Struggling to keep her features calm and composed, she wiped palms that were suddenly slick with sweat against her pants. She followed Jacob's rapid approach like a condemned man watching as the axe slowly fell.

"Everybody grab your gear; we're leaving," Jacob barked as he strode up to the fire.

"What's going on Jacob?" Luciano asked calmly, even as the other commandos rose, instantly ready to jump into action. "I take it you managed to get in touch with your agency?"

"Oh, I got a hold of them; it turns out Jean's been trying to call _me_ for the past hour. He's got a job for us."

"A job? You…you mean a mission?" Melanie asked with excited disbelief.

"That's what I said," Jacob snapped irritably before turning his attention to Luciano, who was still staring at him quizzically. "They picked up an arms dealer last night and just got through interrogating him a few hours ago. Apparently, Balašev has a team of couriers scheduled to meet with some of his contacts within H&K in two days to deliver payment, somewhere within Stelvio Park near the Swiss border."

"You can't be serious," Luciano deadpanned. "How the Hell are we supposed to search that much territory in two days? It's not possible."

Jacob shook his head in denial, countering the other man's argument in a calm, even tone. "We don't need to search the entire border; just those places where there aren't any border-guard patrols scheduled."

Luciano frowned, considering. "If that's the case, then why don't they just call up more patrols, increase aerial surveillance; completely tighten up the border."

"They are sending out extra drones to keep watch but Jean doesn't want them to increase their ground presence and risk scaring off the couriers before the meeting happens. He doesn't give a damn about them; it's Balašev's German contacts he wants and I agree with him on this. We need to find out who's supplying the weapons that Balašev, and others like him, have been selling to Padania."

Melanie's gaze darted back and forth between the two men as they argued. She fidgeted slightly, shifting her weight from one foot to the other as she stood by Jacob's side. Around her, the other commandos were busy tearing down their camp and packing everything away.

"That still gives us a huge area of land to search," Luciano said finally, flicking his gaze away and frowning down at the ground. "And those couriers could be coming from anywhere in the park; there's no way we can track them down in time."

"You're right," Jacob said lightly, nodding in agreement. "But I know where we can start looking."

"You do?" Luciano exclaimed disbelievingly, his jaw falling open.

"I do," Jacob replied with a modes measure of smugness. "Jean gave me a basic description of the couriers: a man and a woman, both from the Milano area; an older, dark-haired woman from Germany or maybe Austria and a thin-faced Eastern-European man. Sound familiar?"

Melanie gave a slight start of alarm as she realized that Jacob's last words had been directed to her. Face pinched with careful thought, Melanie tried to think about what he was talking about, when the answer suddenly came to her. "Oh, the hikers!"

"Exactly," Jacob replied with a pleased grin.

"What hikers?" Luciano asked, confused. Jacob quickly told him about their brief encounter with the small group of hikers the previous day and how they matched Jean's descriptions of the couriers perfectly.

"That sounds awfully convenient Jacob," Luciano said slowly, his face taking on a pensive, sceptical expression. "Stelvio is the largest park in the country and you just happen to run across the very four people we end up getting ordered to hunt down and arrest?"

"I couldn't believe it when I realized who Jean was talking about either," Jacob conceded with a slow, understanding nod. "But as far as I'm concerned, it's about damned time our enemies found out what it feels like to get fucked around by Murphy's Law."

Smirking wryly, Luciano sniffed in amusement. "Well, no argument there. There's still the matter of supplies and weapons though; none of us are carrying anything larger than a hunting knife and we're going to need more than that if we end up in a fight."

"Jean's getting in touch with major Sales; he should have another team deployed within the hour and they'll be bringing everything we need."

"Alright, fine. So what's our first move?" Luciano asked, folding his arms across his chest. The other commandos had finished packing up by this time and as Melanie watched, they all came up next to Luciano, fixing Jacob with calmly expectant looks.

Reaching down to grab and shoulder his pack, Jacob returned the commandos' looks with a steady, commanding stare. "First thing we do is head back to the main path, where Melanie and I encountered the couriers. From there, we try to find out where they went and follow them."

"Our supplies?" Luciano asked.

"Jean said that there's an old ranger station nearby; we'll meet the second GIS team there once we've picked up the couriers' trail."

Luciano nodded in mute acceptance. Then, "Okay, let's go."

Moving swiftly, Melanie followed behind the commandos as they all made their way back up through the steep, twisting mountain trails. Jacob strode along next to her, his face a firm mask of strained effort. He was panting heavily, his face sheathed in a thin patina of sweat. While Jacob wasn't particularly old or out of shape, he was still a good five or six years older than Marshal Cagnani, the eldest of the four commandos. They had set a hard pace in an effort to cut down the lead that the couriers had on them; a pace that she could tell Jacob was having trouble maintaining.

She fought hard to keep the concern she was feeling for him from showing, knowing how upset he would be with her if he noticed. A few times during her search for the commandos, she had been forced to slow down when Jacob began to lag behind her too far. Every time she did so, she had been met with hot glares of smouldering resentment. So she knew that he would not thank her for pointing out his weakness.

Fortunately for Melanie's peace-of-mind and Jacob's fragile male ego, they reached the crossroads his faltering physical stamina became too readily apparent. Angelo and Marco immediately began searching a short way down either end of the trail, Luciano positioning himself at the apex of the fork, where the two paths split. Raphael, as the swiftest runner among the commandos, had been sent off to meet up with the second GIS team and the lead them back to the crossroads.

Gazing up and down the trail appraisingly, Luciano took a moment to study the surroundings before speaking. "So where did you see these hikers, exactly?" At Jacob's prompting, Melanie quickly related what had happened the previous day, about her brief encounter with the four hikers. It wasn't much, but when combined with the little that Jacob knew, it at least gave them a direction to start looking in.

"Where does this trail end up?" Jacob asked, staring off down the wide, well-worn path.

"Nowhere really," Angelo answered, walking back towards the small group. "It just leads back to a park ranger station and visitor center. There's a side-trail that eventually leads out to a small village, but that would take them south, not north."

"And how many side-trails are there, that _would_ take them north?" Jacob asked somewhat impatiently.

"There's dozens," Angelo admitted, shrugging his shoulders apologetically. "From groomed public hiking trails down to simple goat tracks. Lucky for us, most of those lead either to scenic vistas, formal campsites, or in the case of the goat tracks, up into the mountains. As for trails that would take them close enough to the Swiss border to be viable for them, I'd say maybe eighteen or nineteen."

"That's still a lot," Jacob grumbled, Melanie managing to pick out the disappointment in his hard, stony face.

Luciano nodded slowly, agreeing. "It is. And as early in the season as it is, the ground is still pretty frozen, which means little chance of there being any good tracks."

"It also means there won't be many other people on the trails to obscure whatever tracks there might be," Angelo pointed out, hoping to be the voice of optimism.

"True," Luciano admitted after a time, frowning in thought. "Alright, we split up and start searching the trails, one-by-one. We won't be able to do much until Raphael gets back with our supplies and reinforcements, but we can at least start to narrow things down." After this pronouncement, he focused his attention on Jacob and a sheepish, almost apologetic look came over him. "Jacob, don't take this the wrong way, but how well do you think you can manage to hunt out a trail in this terrain?"

Jacob frowned, saying grudgingly, "Not as well as you can, I'll admit. It _has_ been a few years since I've done this kind of thing. But I think I could probably still hold my own."

"Alright, then for now you can pair up with Marcelo and Melanie can go with Angelo."

"Sounds good to me," Jacob agreed with a curt nod.

Melanie's eyes went wide with alarm, a sudden surge of panic tightening an iron fist around her heart. Sidling up closer to Jacob, she leaned over to hiss softly in his eat. "Umm, Jacob? Can…can I talk to you for a minute? In private?"

Frowning, Jacob glared down at her, a stern rebuke on his lips that faltered and died as he saw the nervous anxiety shining in her eyes. Sighing, he nodded reluctantly, excusing himself and walking off a short ways down the trail until they were out of earshot. Then, he turned on Melanie and barked out quietly but intensely, "What?"

Melanie burst out as soon as they were far enough away to not be overheard, unable to hold it in any longer. "Jacob what are you doing? We can't be separated; we need to stick together."

"What the Hell are you talking about, Melanie?" he demanded scornfully, his face twisted into an expressing of contemptuous incredulity.

"Jacob, I'm your partner; I _need_ to stay by your side in order to protect you."

"Protect me from what?" Jacob scoffed with a harsh, barking laugh. "From tripping over a root and falling on my ass? Jesus Christ, Melanie, we're a good ten or eleven hours behind the couriers so I highly doubt that there's any danger of us running into them anytime soon."

"But we should still…"

"No, we shouldn't," Jacob snapped fiercely, his patience at an end. "God damn it Melanie, you're not some brain-dead first generation drone. Use your fucking head! We've only got two days to search almost two dozen possible trails to find those hikers. Going out in groups of three is just a pointless waste of manpower."

Melanie felt her face hardening into a stubborn, petulant glower. Her head was starting to ache with a dull, painful throbbing centered right behind her eyes. Logically, she knew that Jacob was right and that there was no further point in arguing with him, but despite this obvious truth, she was finding herself torn between the conflicting directives to both obey Jacob's orders and to ensure his security and safety no matter what. This conflict drove her to make one final, desperate plea. "Then we can go as our own group; just the two of us." Her plea came out more as a piteous whine that she instantly regretted. She knew all too well how much Jacob hated whining from her.

Sure enough, as soon as the words left her mouth, Jacob's face twisted into a disgusted, scornful scowl. "And do what? I just finished telling Cagnani that I know barely more than the basics of tracking, so unless you've magically become an expert mantracker at some point in the last three hours, we would be completely useless together."

Melanie hung her head in shame at Jacob's derisive chastisement, wishing not for the first time that she had chosen to keep her mouth shut. After an interminably long pause, however, she heard Jacob sigh wearily and, lifting her head hesitantly, she saw him staring at her with a mixture of admonition and regret. Scrubbing at his face with one hand, Jacob fidgeted, glancing around awkwardly before continuing on in a calmer, more placating tone. "Alright, look: if it makes you feel any better, you can think of this as an extended training exercise."

"Extended training? What does that mean?"

"It means that you're going to be spending the next several hours tagging along behind one of the best trackers in Italy," Jacob replied with clearly strained exasperation. "I want you to study what he does; learn his techniques."

A sudden small thrill of excitement bloomed inside Melanie as she considered Jacob's suggestions. She had never thought to look at the situation as an opportunity to learn for the commandos directly. In a way, it would almost be the same as how Triela had gone to study from Major Sales after her disastrous first battle with Pinocchio. And in Melanie's mind, any idea that brought her even a hairsbreadth closer to being like her idol was worth leaping upon.

"I…I can do that," she stammered weakly, almost giddy with glee.

Jacob gave a curt nod, grumbling out flatly, "Good; then let's stop wasting time." Without another word between them, the pair returned to the waiting commandos and after a brief apology on Jacob's part, the group quickly split up to begin the long, laborious search.

Adjusting the position of her pack slightly, Melanie moved to follow behind Angelo as the pair pressed on ahead of the others. Having been born and raised just outside of Trento, Angelo was intimately familiar with the environs of Stelvio National Park and knew almost all of the little shortcuts that one could take if in a hurry. Because of this and the added speed and stamina afforded by Melanie's cyborg body, it had been decided that she and Angelo would tackle those trails that were the furthest away. Loping along behind Angelo, Melanie glanced back at Jacob, who gave her a single reassuring nod, before the natural curvature of the terrain took him out of her sight.

For the next two hours, Melanie followed dutifully behind Angelo. Neither one spoke, both consumed by the need to push onward as quickly as possible. Her legs pumped in a steady, ceaseless rhythm as she hiked up and down the never-ending hills and gullies. She slipped around trees and bushes, flowing effortlessly across the rugged terrain as if she had been born to it. For a long time, Melanie lost herself in the liberated feeling of unhindered motion. They were still some distance from where they were to begin their search, leaving her free to focus solely on moving forward. There was no need to watch out for threats, no need to pause to scrutinize the landscape; there was only the need to run. And run and run.

It was a sensation she had first stumbled upon, ironically enough, during the gruelling, Hellish nightmare of her fifteen mile rucksack marches. Near the end, when Jacob had finally, gloriously, changed from trying to grind her down and break her, to merely challenging her ability to perform, Melanie had discovered a rewarding freedom in the mindless rhythm of simply running. Even burdened as she had been by the nearly one-hundred and fifty pounds of iron weights she had been forced to carry, she had come to enjoy the feel of her muscles pumping, her hair streaming out behind her as the air blew past her face. Those moments had been filled with a profound…tranquility. One that she was rediscovering as she ran along behind Angelo.

Panting just ever-so-slightly, her face flushed with exhilaration and glistening with a fine sheen of sweat, Melanie pulled up to a stop as Angelo threw one arm out, hand upraised and clenched into a tight fist. The man slowed his pace, stopping and crouching up against the trunk of a tree.

"What's wrong? Why are we stopping?" Melanie wondered idly. Her entire body was buzzing with the desire to keep running and she had to consciously will herself to stand still.

Flicking a quick glance up at her, Angelo barked out a short, shaky laugh and shook his head. "I believe I mentioned something earlier about how we mere mortals can't match the stamina that you cyborgs possess; we actually need to rest once and a while. Although I'm sure Jacob would be thrilled to hear about your enthusiasm."

Melanie's mouth fell open slightly and she felt her face burning in more than just exertion. Of course, she had completely forgotten that Angelo was not blessed by the same tireless stamina that she was. The man was a member of one of the most elite Special Forces units in the world, at the absolute peak of human physical conditioning, yet was still no match for her. She could only imagine how humbling and embarrassing it must be for him. "Oh, right; I'm sorry. I…I completely forgot."

To her relief, rather than seem upset or petulant about having been showed-up by a fifteen year old girl, Angelo laughed good-naturedly, waving off her concern. "It's fine, it's fine. I'll admit though, I kind of feel like I'm back in those six months we spent training with _Leprotto_."

"Who?" Melanie asked, confused. She had heard the commandos mention that name once or twice, but she had yet to figure out what they had been talking about. She had figured that it had something to do with the GIS itself and so wasn't really any of her business to ask.

"Oh, that's just our nickname for Triela," Angelo replied, chuckling. He then sighed wistfully, his eyes taking on a far-away look as he spoke. "I got to say, there is certainly something profoundly humbling about being thrown around like a rag-doll by a slim, frail-looking little girl."

"You were one of the commandos who helped train Triela?" Melanie asked, slightly awestruck now.

Angelo nodded slowly, still staring off into the distance. "Indeed I was. It was the first time any of us had ever met any of you girls; it was quite the experience. I've never seen anyone with the kind of burning passion that she had. She poured everything she had into the training and not once did she ever utter a single word of complaint, no matter how hard we worked her. It's almost as if she thrived on the challenges we set her; the greater the obstacle, the more alive she became.

"Speaking of which, if these little training exercises become a regular routine for us, we're going to need to come up with a nickname for you, too."

Melanie's jaw dropped open again at that, her eyes bulging wide and her face turning pure scarlet. A storm of nervous butterflies erupted inside of her stomach and she had to lean up against a tree as her knees suddenly went all weak and watery. "Oh…oh my God, no! No, I…I can't! I mean…there's no way I could…" she stammered out awkwardly, her mind sent reeling into a frenzied flurry. Imagine such bold-faced arrogance; the very notion of her receiving the same kind of honour that Triela had was absurd! "I…I could never be good enough for…for something like that."

Angelo stared at her, silent and unmoving, for a long time; long enough to make Melanie feel even more uncomfortable than she already was. "Wow," he eventually said slowly, shaking his head in amazement. "You have some serious self-esteem issues, you know that?"

Melanie gaped at him, appalled. Her face screwed up in indignant anger and embarrassed effrontery. The nerve of the man! How dare he just come out and say something so…so…_So__ true,_ Melanie admitted with a rueful shake of her head. Sighing, she said aloud, "Yeah, I know."

Dropping her pack to the ground, she leaned up against a tree and slowly slid to the ground. Drawing her knees up to her chest, Melanie buried her face into her crossed arms. "I don't know why I'm like this; I hate it. It's like, no matter how good I do at anything, there's this voice in the back of my mind, telling me that I should have done so much better and then I just end up feeling disappointed and depressed."

Sitting with her head on her arms, Melanie didn't see the exasperated and slightly disbelieving look that Angelo threw her. She glanced up sharply, however, when he abruptly burst out laughing. "What's so funny?" she demanded hotly, angry and insulted.

"You know what your problem is? You think too much. You think that just because you're a state-of-the-art combat cyborg, that you should be perfect at everything you try to do, the first time you try to do it. Well congratulations; you've just discovered that no matter how much technology goes into making you girls what you are, you're all still just as human as the rest of us.

"Contrary to what you seem to think about her, Triela wasn't always the perfect little Princess either. It took her a long time to wrap her head around the concept that she couldn't just use her superior strength to bull her way through every opponent she came up against. For the first two months of her training, she spent more time being knocked around and laid out on her ass than anything else."

"So, basically, I should just stop complaining and keep trying?" Melanie said dryly, fixing Angelo with a level stare.

"Pretty much."

Melanie sniffed lightly, leaning her head back against the tree trunk and closing her eyes. "You sound like Doctor Bianchi."

"Who?"

"One of the agency's head doctors. He's…he's kind of like our therapist."

"A head-shrink eh?" Angelo said thoughtfully, rubbing at his chin and grinning in amused consideration. "Well, I guess it's good to know I have a back-up career if I ever decide to quit the Special Forces." They both shared a laugh over that, each one taking a moment to eat a snack and down a few mouthfuls of water.

"You're a lot different than what I imagined," Melanie said after recapping her canteen.

"How so?"

"Well, I don't know. Most of the Agency's SRT members are pretty cold and serious-looking, so I figured all Special Forces soldiers were like that. Plus, you're a sniper and I know just from my training that that is really stressful and serious work. My friend Kara sometimes does sniper work too and she once said that it's almost like having the power of a God, being able to just snuff out a person's life from so far away, without them ever knowing you're there until the bullet takes them. That responsibility can't be easy to live with."

"It isn't," Angelo admitted seriously. "But there's two kinds of people: those who choose to cry and whine about all the problems in the world and those who choose to recognize it all as one big, cosmic joke and laugh about it. Personally, I prefer to spend my time laughing, rather than crying."

As soon as the words left Angelo's mouth, an icy tingling shot down Melanie's spine. Her face stiffened into a slightly stunned mask, her mind withdrawing inward. Something about what he had said sounded so familiar. Just like before, in the valley when she and Jacob had stopped to camp for the night, she felt as if some hidden piece of her past was lurking beneath the waters of her subconscious, just out of reach.

"Hey, are you okay?" Angelo asked, concerned. He reached out with one hand, gently shaking her out of her reverie.

Blinking dazedly, Melanie smiled, nodding in response. "Yeah, I'm fine. I just had this weird feeling of déjà vu, is all. It happens sometimes; we get quick flashes of our past lives."

"Oh, I see. Are you going to be okay? I mean, I know you girls don't exactly have…um, happy pasts."

"No, I suppose we don't," Melanie agreed somewhat sadly. "But I'm okay. The feeling is already fading."

"Alright, if you say so." Angelo took another drink from his canteen before recapping it and popping the last bite of his energy bar into his mouth. Then, dusting off his hands, he rose and shouldered his pack. "Well, we should probably get going. We are on a tight schedule, after all." Nodding silently in assent, Melanie followed suit and together, they plunged back into the underbrush, returning to the hunt.


	16. Chapter 15: Cracks in the Wall

Chapter 15: Cracks in the Wall

Crouching low against the sparsely-forested slope, Melanie slowly and carefully ran her gaze across the rocky ground. A damp, bitterly wind blew down from the higher peaks, making her shiver slightly and huddle deeper into her coat and sweater. The air was filled with the sound of rushing, tumbling water from the narrow river that coursed hard and fast through the bottom of the valley. The overcast sky cast pale shadows across the entire landscape that would have made picking out small details difficult, if not for her enhanced eyesight. Off to her left, several paces behind and lower down on the slope, Angelo was busy making a similar slow scan of the terrain.

Creeping forward several steps, Melanie kept her focus locked on a particular patch of exposed dirt, where successive cycles of wind and rain had scoured away all plant life but for a few blotchy patches of hardy lichen. There was something odd about the texture of the dirt, an abnormality that broke the smooth pattern and drew Melanie's attention. Kneeling down next to the patch, she ran her hands carefully over the ground, noting the way several colour striations didn't quite line up, as if something had shifted this one patch of dirt downward several inches.

Rising up slightly, Melanie turned about and, using the birdcall that the commandos had taught her, signalled to Angelo. The man quickly made his way over, offering her a curious, quizzical look. "I think I found something," she said quietly, her voice pitched low so as not to carry in the cold, thin air. She pointed to the strange disturbance, watching anxiously as he ran his gaze over the dirt, hoping that she was right on her suspicions.

"Well, something definitely walked across here," he said after a time. "See how these rocks are slightly darker than the rest?" She nodded, having indeed picked out that detail. "That means that, up until only a short time ago, they were face-down in the dirt, not exposed to the open air." He frowned critically, throwing her a side-long glance. "Chances are though that this is just a goat track. We _are_ in the middle of ibex territory, after all. Could even be from that herd we saw a few hours back."

Melanie smiled thinly, recognizing the slightly challenging tone in Angelo's voice. He was testing her. "It can't be. If it were an ibex track, there would be signs of gouging in the dirt from the front of its hoof. Plus, the track is too big to be from a hoof. This looks more like something stepped down and then slipped slightly, scrapping the dirt and pulling the rocks free."

She waited, studying Angelo's face, feeling a surge of pride as he grinned and nodded approvingly. "Very good. You're right, this _is_ a boot print. You have good eyes Melanie; I think even I might have missed this one." Melanie blushed at the unexpected and probably undeserved compliment, glancing away hastily.

"It looks like Marcelo was right: the couriers _did_ swing west through this valley. That _figlio __di __putana_; I owe him ten Euros now." The half-joking comment made Melanie smile, even as it dampened her pleasure at having picked out the boot track. While she was certainly happy for the praise and vindication of her rapidly growing skills, it was all a little academic at this point. After two days of hard-paced tracking, the GIS commandos were almost completely certain about where the couriers were heading.

* * *

After the brief conversation that Melanie and Angelo had shared, they had jumped right back into the search for the couriers' trail. That entire afternoon was spent in the pursuit, the only pause coming when Marshal Cagnani radioed everyone to let them know that Marcelo had arrived with the reinforcements and supplies.

Unfortunately for Melanie and Angelo, they were unable to score the honours of picking up the trail. That prize ended up going to Alberto Valente, one of the reinforcement GIS operatives. Despite that small letdown however, Melanie was still given the pleasure of joining Angelo, Marcelo, Raphael and Marshal Cagnani as they ranged ahead of Jacob and the remainder of the commandos. Taking his advice to heart, she strained herself to absorb as much information and knowledge as possible. And on the commandos' part, they were only too happy to teach her. While three of them moved on to seek out further signs of the couriers' trail, one would hang slightly back with her and point things out, explaining what all of those signs were and how they knew it evidenced the couriers' passage. They supplied small tidbits of wisdom on where the best places to look for tracks were and how to predict what an adversary might do; the differences between chasing an enemy who knew you were following verses hunting one who was unaware of your presence.

Melanie felt more alive during her time with the commandos than ever before. Despite the fact that she was a cyborg, a government-commissioned murder-machine, they truly seemed to accept her as one of their own. The quick, easy friendship she found herself developing with Angelo certainly helped and more than once, during their quick breaks that they spent chatting – or rather, that _he_ spent chatting and she spent listening – Melanie had ended up doubled-over in laughter from some joke or funny anecdote that he had made.

The training and teaching didn't end with the end of the day, either. Both nights, first at an old ranger cabin and then nestled in a small rocky outcrop on the thickly forested side of a mountain, the commandos had continued giving her lessons. Not only on tracking and hunting, but on basic woodcraft and wilderness survival as well. Even more thrilling for her, was the fact that Jacob seemed willing to take his own advice on the training opportunity. The first night at the ranger cabin, Melanie had been shocked when he decided to sit in on her lessons with the commandos.

"I did say I needed to brush up on things, didn't I?" he had explained gruffly in response to her startled look. "Well I might as well start now." Melanie could not have been happier.

The second night had brought an even bigger surprise, one that almost had her in tears with happiness and pride.

Soon after they had finished setting up camp, and while a pair of commandos was busy readying supper, Raphael had called her over, withdrawing several items from his pack as he did so. Setting aside a number of large spools of rough-looking twine of different brown and green hues, he had unfolded a large piece of burlap netting that had been dyed in a camouflaged pattern. Using a marker and a pair of fabric shears, he had had her stand with arms outstretched, while he made quick notations and cut out a large, roughly triangular section from the net.

When she asked him what he was doing, Raphael had grinned broadly, chuckling to himself as he replied. "You're going to be a sniper, right? Well, any sniper who's worth anything needs to have a ghillie suit or two. Of course, this will be more of a ghillie _cape_, but it will still do the trick. And the sooner you learn how to do this, the sooner you can start making your own, proper suit."

In her weeks of training at the Agency compound, Melanie had never heard tell of a ghillie suit, but as the commandos explained to her what it was, and how snipers used them to blend into their environments, breaking up their profile to conceal their presence from their targets, she felt herself becoming choked up. As they explained, the manufacturing of a ghillie suit was typically a personal endeavour, carried out by each sniper individually. It was a project that every good sniper took huge amounts of pride in accomplishing properly. After all, snipers often relied on their ghillie suits to keep them alive, undetected by enemies as they carried out their missions. They had to be perfect, or else they could end up at worst spotted and killed, or at the very least fail their mission. And now, here were the commandos, taking an active hand in teaching her and helping her make her very own, very first, ghillie suit.

The unfinished cape now sat in a carefully wrapped bundle in the heart of Melanie's pack. She had spent over an hour sitting with Raphael, working with him as they went through the monotonous process of tying dozens of strings, cut from the spools of synthetic jute twine, to the netting. The effect, when Melanie draped the cape experimentally over her shoulders, made her look as if she was wearing a shaggy coat of long, mangy, mottled fur.

Back in the present, Melanie straightened, arching her back slightly to relieve cramped muscles. For the last couple of hours, the entire group had been carefully searching through a complex valley network of interlinked folds in the earth, formed at a point where three separate mountain ranges collided with one another, creating dozens of small peaks and crevasses that they had to painstakingly search through. They knew that they were getting down to the wire in regards to their timeline and with the Swiss border less than ten kilometres away, Jacob and Marshal Cagnani weren't about to let the couriers slip away because of a poor assumption.

Now however, it looked as if they were closing in, the noose starting to draw tight around the couriers and their German contacts. In her minds' eye, Melanie recalled the map layout of the surrounding area. A couple of kilometres further along the valley chain, on the far slope of the next big rise, there was supposed to be an old, decrepit hunter's cabin, abandoned for years. It was here that the commandos were sure the couriers had been headed and where they now waited to make the money drop.

"I could radio back to Marcelo if you like," Melanie offered in response to Angelo's comment. "Save you the trouble of having to talk to him."

Angelo frowned, considering the proposal only briefly before shaking his head and sighing. "Thanks, but no. If he's going to gloat about being right then I might as well let him get it over with; spare me from having to listen to him go on about it later." Melanie nodded her understanding and Angelo lifted one hand to key his earpiece and report the discovery of the couriers' trail. Moments later, Marshal Cagnani responded, ordering everyone to press forward and regroup at the base of the ridge that overlooked the old cabin.

Turning towards one another, their eyes met and locked. Angelo offered her a quick, easy grin. "This is it kid; you ready?"

"I'm going to have to be, aren't I?" Melanie replied lightly, returning his grin with a small, wan smile. She tried to project an air of relaxed confidence, but now that the moment was upon her, she found herself feeling horribly nervous. This wasn't a training run; she wasn't working towards a good grade or a top ten time score. This was the real thing. Her first mission, with potentially her entire future riding on its success or failure. This could very well be her first and only chance to prove to Director Lorenzo and Signor Croce that she wasn't worthless; that she _could_ be of real use to the Agency.

Making their way together towards the ridge, they found Raphael and two other commandos already there waiting. They all nodded to each other in greeting, Raphael offering his commiseration at Angelo's having lost his bet with Marcelo. Melanie stood quietly to one side, slightly uncomfortable with the intensity of the looks the other two commandos were staring at her with. She didn't know any of the reinforcement GIS operatives nearly as well as she did Angelo and the others; they had kept themselves somewhat apart and aloof from her over the past two days. There was something distinctly…expectant in their gazes, as if they were relying upon her to be some hidden ace up their sleeves in case something went wrong. She did not enjoy the added weight of that pressure.

Fortunately for her, however, within only a few minutes, they were joined by first Marcelo and then two more of the reinforcement commandos. The added numbers helped split everyone's attention, taking some of the focus off of her. As expected, as soon as Marcelo arrived, he started in on his good-natured, teasing ribbing of Angelo. For his part, Angelo bore the jokes with a sense of weathered stoicism, silently pulling out a ten Euro note from his wallet and handing it over.

Soon after that, Jacob arrived with Marshal Cagnani and the final GIS operative. With their arrival, everyone gathered close to go over the plan. It was a relatively simple one: half of the team would circle around to the far side of the valley, where the Germans would have to leave in order to head back across the border. The rest of them would array themselves along the ridge, watching the cabin. When the couriers and their contacts left, the rear-guard team would take down and apprehend the couriers, before shadowing the German's to catch them in a pincer-attack at the valley's mouth. Simple. Routine. So why did Melanie feel like she was about to throw up from nervousness?

Marcelo and Raphael left, along with two of the other commandos each, to provide the ambushing force, while Melanie followed behind Jacob, Angelo, Marshal Cagnani and the last four commandos as they ascended the ridge. Near the top, they all got down onto their stomachs and crawled the last few metres, until they were able to just peek up, over the edge of the ridgeline. Down below, near the base of the valley, squatted the cabin. It was indeed a derelict wreck. The log walls were splintered and greying from age and weathering, gaps visible where the chinking between the logs had crumbled and fallen away. The roof sagged dangerously low in several places, sinking all the way to the ground where it extended out from the main cabin to encompass the woodshed. The entire structure tilted down at one corner noticeably, looking as if it was on the verge of completely collapsing.

Propping herself up on her elbows, Melanie settled down in the long grass, with Jacob on one side and Angelo on the other. "And now we wait," Jacob whispered softly. He had his rifle at his side, loaded and cocked, ready to fire. To either side of her, the other GIS operatives shifted their respective weapons into positions where they would be quick to hand. Melanie's own weapon, a Mauser 86SR sniper rifle that Jacob had requested the reinforcement commandos bring along for her, was slung across her shoulders, still encased in its protective bag. On Jacob's orders, she was not to withdraw it unless absolutely necessary. She was, after all, still not cleared for combat. Only three days ago, she would have been mortified at the slight; forced to sit by and watch as everyone else marched off to do their jobs. Now, however, she was still buoyed by the elation of just being a part of a real mission, however small her role.

The minutes ticked by, the ambushing force eventually radioing in that they were in position and standing by. Pale shadows stretched across the valley as the cloud cover thickened, blanketing the entire area in a murky greyness to match the ramshackle cabin. Eventually a light rain began to fall; a heavy misting that quickly soaked everything and left Melanie shivering slightly in the damp.

As the minutes grew into an hour and more, Melanie heard Jacob beginning to shift uncomfortably. "This is getting fucking ridiculous," he growled softly. "How long does it take to pass over six million Euros, shake hands and then leave?"

"Not this long," Marshal Cagnani admitted sombrely. "Something isn't right here. We need to go down there and find out what the Hell is going on."

Angelo spoke up from Melanie's other side, his gaze still fixed upon the cabin below. "That's not going to be easy. There's a good three hundred metres of open field between us and the cabin and there are windows facing up-slope."

"I'll do it!" Melanie jumped in, hissing excitedly. "I can use my ghillie cape to sneak to the cabin; they'll never see me coming."

"Not a chance," Jacob growled immediately, his head thrashing from side to side in fierce denial. "It's too risky. You're still not fully trained or combat certified, remember? We send in someone who knows what they're doing and has actually done this before."

Turning towards her handler, Melanie fixed him with a calm, level stare. When she spoke, it was with a carefully measured seriousness. "Jacob, I _have_ to be the one that goes; it's the only way that makes sense."

"Really? And why is that?"

"Because I'm the only one who can afford to get shot in order to take them in alive," she replied flatly. "If any of you go down there and they put up a fight, you'll need to fight back, which would risk killing them. Which would ruin the mission." Her reply left Jacob gaping slightly, unable to find any words to rebuke her undeniable logic.

"She does has a point, Jacob," Marshal Cagnani grunted in agreement. "She can move faster than any of us here. If it comes down to a fight, she can be on them and cracking heads quicker than they could react."

Growling low in the back of his throat, Jacob scrubbed one hand down his face in irritation. "I still don't like it."

"It's the best tactical decision and you know it Jacob; you don't have to like it."

Jacob growled again, fuming silently for a few moments. Then, grudgingly, "Damn it. Alright, fine."

In a flash Melanie was slipping back down the slope, far enough to be able to shrug out of her pack and start digging into it without being seen above the ridgeline. She pulled out her unfinished ghillie cape, draping it across her shoulders and tying it in place. Jacob sidled down to kneel in front of her and she tilted her head back to allow him to smear her face and neck with camouflage paint.

"Give me your rifle," he muttered softly as he was applying a streaking pattern of greens and browns to match the long, waving grasses. "You're not going to need it down there and if you do, it would be next to useless in a close-quarters fight anyway."

"So how do I defend myself if something happens?" she asked, feeling decidedly squeamish about the notion of going into a potential battle unarmed.

"I don't know; maybe you could use your vastly superior strength and speed to beat them all unconscious," Jacob retorted acerbically. His face and tone softened slightly then and he unclipped the combat knife hanging from the webbing across his chest and handed it over to her. "Here, you can use this. It should be more than enough for any trouble you get into. You shouldn't anyway; you're going down there to scout, not to fight. But if anything _does_happen, remember that we need them alive."

"Understood," Melanie replied softly, her hands gently wrapping around the worn leather sheath. She was thankful for the almost comforting numbness spreading through her mind as her Conditioning began to flow, dampening her emotions and instilling the cold calmness of a cyborg killer. It kept her from becoming choked up at the thought of being entrusted with one of Jacob's very own precious, treasured weapons.

"And I want that back; so don't go snapping it off in someone's skull, got that?"

"Yes sir," Melanie replied, managing to give him a faint smile as she moved back up the ridge. At the top, Angelo gave her a reassuring nod that she noted silently. Drawing up the oversized hood of her ghillie cape, pulling it forward so that it completely obscured her face, Melanie crawled over the edge and began making her way down the other side.

Her stomach pressed tight to the ground, she slowly and carefully slithered forward, using only her elbows and knees to pull and push herself downward. She moved with an almost interminable slowness, pausing every few seconds to stop and wait with baited breath in case someone in the cabin below was looking out the window. Inch by inch, foot by foot, she crept ever closer towards her goal. Ears straining for the slightest of sounds coming from the cabin, Melanie peered out from beneath her hood, staring from between the swaying blades of grass that would have been almost knee high on her if she stood up.

Melanie gauged that she was still a good two hundred metres away from the cabin when the heavy misting developed into a light, steady rain that added to her overall discomfort. The ground was cold beneath her, the chill slowly seeping into her chest and stomach. The dampness quickly began to soak through the sleeves of her jacket and sweater, leaving her elbows wet and cold. With the rain, the surrounding temperature dropped noticeably and soon she felt her hands starting to go numb. The rain also began to weigh down the grass, keeping it from swaying in the breeze. This forced Melanie to move at an even slower pace, lest someone notice the one random patch of grass that continued to move while everything else around it remained motionless.

Despite the creeping chill that slowly soaked deeper and deeper into her, Melanie felt beads of sweat rolling down her back and sides. Her pulse was racing, each breath a slow, tightly controlled pant. The Conditioning drugs flooding through her bloodstream were the only things keeping Melanie from having a full-blown panic-attack. She knew that she was taking too long, that it was only a matter of time before one of the couriers noticed that something was wrong, realized that something was crawling towards them through the grass. At any moment, she expected to catch the sound of weapons being cocked and the hiss of bullets tearing through the air.

Melanie barely held back the cry of alarm as her elbow banged into something solid that made a dull thud as she hit it. Glancing up, she was shocked to find her arm pressed up against the side of the cabin. She had made it! She had managed to crawl all of the way down the slope, undetected.

Squirming around until she was lying alongside the cabin's wall, she took several deep, steadying breaths in an effort to calm down and steady her nerves. When her pulse and breathing rate were both once again under her firm control, Melanie slowly levered herself up into a low crouch. Stopping to listen momentarily, she crept forward until she was positioned beneath and just to the side of one of the windows. Once there, she angled her ear toward the opening, pausing once again to hear any sounds coming from within. When, after several minutes of straining, she couldn't make out so much as the tiniest of noises coming from the cabin's interior, Melanie felt a tingling chill creep down her spine. Something was indeed wrong. The timeline had been right; the last clear tracks they had found put them at less than hour behind the couriers. There had not been any evidence of return tracks, so they couldn't have missed the money drop. The couriers had to be inside. So why couldn't she hear them?

Her heart again jack-hammering within her chest, Melanie gathered up her courage and, ever-so-slowly, peeked up over the window sill. The inside of the cabin was bathed in shadow, except where gaping holes in the sagging roof allowed in the pale, weak sunlight. One of those beams of light fell upon an oddly rounded, soft-looking shape. Staring at it, Melanie felt her breath suddenly catch, her eyes popping wide open.

Cursing to herself harshly, she was up and over the window sill in a flash, throwing back the hood of her ghillie cape to clear her vision as she did so. Her cybernetic eyes adjusted to the gloom almost instantly, allowing her to easily make out the vivid crimson stains that were sprayed across the crumbling, rotting walls. Splayed out on the floor were the bodies of the four couriers, bloody boot prints showing where their German counterparts had tracked through the blood pooling beneath the swiftly cooling corpses.

"Melanie, what the Hell are you doing? What's going on down there?" Jacob hissed into her earpiece, his voice carrying blended tones of irritated anger and nervous fear.

"Jacob, you need to get down here. Now. It was an ambush; the couriers are all dead and the Germans are gone."

A faint, burbling gasp made Melanie spin about sharply, her hand flying to Jacob's combat knife and sliding it free in a single, fluid motion. Searching about quickly, she found the source of the noise: one of the couriers was not dead. The woman, the same woman that had spoken to her several days ago when they encountered each other on the crossroads.

Darting down to the woman's side, Melanie carefully sliced open her light jacket and pulled back the two sides to expose a blood-drenched chest and side. Running a swift, evaluating gaze over the woman's torso, Melanie determined that she had been hit in the chest by at least three rounds from practically point-blank range. She could smell the acrid stench of the discharged gunpowder clinging tight to the woman's body, as well as the slight charring of her skin around the wounds from powder-burns. There must have been at least one other injury, as the blood pooling beneath her was centered around her lower back, rather than her side.

There was a heavy thumping from the cabin's front door and seconds later Jacob and the commandos were spilling into the room, weapons levelled and sweeping about in all directions. One of the commandos cursed softly, quickly silenced as Marshal Cagnani barked swift orders for them to establish a defensive perimeter around the cabin. He then approached Melanie and Jacob, squatting down on the opposite side of the wounded woman.

"What the Hell happened here?" Jacob demanded. His barking tone made the woman's eyes flutter open weakly and she gazed about, dazed and unfocused. Bright red, frothy blood bubbled at the corners of her mouth and leaked down her chin.

Kneeling down next to the woman, Jacob leaned over her, grabbing her by the chin to force her to meet his gaze. "Look at me! What happened here? Where are the men you were supposed to meet with?"

Marshal Cagnani frowned, casting a disapproving glare over at Jacob. "She has a punctured lung Jacob; she's drowning in her own blood. I don't think she can answer you."

Ignoring the other man, Jacob continued to badger the woman, whose eyes roamed aimlessly about, unheeding. Her gaze eventually fell upon Melanie and a faint glimmer of recognition blossomed, presaged by a short, sharp, bubbling gasp. The woman's lips began to twitch and move, spilling a fresh wave of blood down her chin.

"She's trying to talk," Jacob said, surprised. He leaned in close, titling his ear towards her mouth, but pulled back quickly with a sour frown. "I can't make out what she's saying. Melanie, your ears are better than ours; find out what she's saying.

Instantly complying, Melanie shifted places with Jacob, leaning in close as he had done. She could just make out a soft, burbling whisper escaping the woman's lips, the faintest hints of words decipherable. "You're…a…cop?"

"Uh…y-yeah. Sort of," Melanie replied, nodding gently. "Please, we need to know what happened here? Why did the men you were meeting with attack you?" The woman's lips began to writhe again, looking as if she was struggling to form words.

"What's she saying?" Jacob barked.

"I don't know; I don't think she's saying anything," Melanie replied distractedly, her attention focused solely upon the woman. The woman seemed to gather up all of her remaining strength, struggling to get out one last word. Leaning in closer, Melanie waited expectantly for it. All at once, the woman's face twisted into a contemptuous scowl and with a harsh, grating cough, spat a thick wad of bloody phlegm directly into Melanie's face. She then promptly slumped back to the floor, her breathing fading, eyes glazing over in death.

Shocked, Melanie reeled back, blinking dazedly. Reaching up hesitantly, she wiped at the blood and spittle that was sliding down her cheek. "Well that was a waste of fucking time," Jacob growled."

"And it still leaves us without answers," Marshal Cagnani sighed, rising. "Why would the people they were supposed to deliver the money to suddenly decide to turn around and kill them?"

"Maybe they got greedy?" Melanie suggested, accepting the small rag Jacob handed her to clean off her face. "Decided to just take the money and run."

"Only if they happened to be meeting with the men directly responsible for shipping the weapons that Balašev was selling to Padania," Jacob replied in a low, frustrated growl. "Which isn't likely. No, their contacts were most likely the same as they were: couriers paid to pick up the money and deliver it back to Oberndorf."

"Why? What difference would that make?" Melanie wondered.

"The difference is that the men they work for are making a fortune by stealing guns and ammunition from one of the largest weapons manufacturers in the world and then selling them to criminals and terrorists. Not the kinds of people you risk pissing off just to run away with six million Euros. Six million Euros spit three or four ways, at that." Jacob broke off from his heated explanation to turn his attention to Marshall Cagnani, who was slowly gazing about the room. "What is it Luciano? You look like you've just thought of something."

"This whole thing stinks," the other man grunted sourly. "Look at the blood splatter, the bullet holes. This wasn't done by simple nine millimetre ammunition. These are 5.56 NATO rounds; automatic weapons." Halting his slow pacing, he turned to regard Jacob with a hard, level stare. "What the hell kind of courier sneaks across the border packing sub-machine guns and assault rifles?"

"The kind that intends to kill whoever it is they're meeting with," Jacob replied grimly.

"Exactly. Whoever these people were, they weren't couriers; they were a clean-up crew."

"You think Balašev's German contact somehow found out he'd been arrested and sent in a team to conduct damage control? Cut all ties to Balašev that could trace back to him?"

"That's exactly what I'm thinking."

Jacob frowned thoughtfully, folding his arms across his chest. "That does make the most sense. But we've had Balašev in our custody for less than a week. How the Hell did they find out so fast?"

"Does it matter?" Melanie suddenly piped up, instantly pulling both men's attention to her. She wilted slightly under the intensity of their respective glares, but summoned the courage to press on. "Whatever the reason, it doesn't change our mission, does it? I mean, all that really matters is our chasing them down and capturing them alive, right?"

For a long moment, both men stared at her, unblinking, silent. Then, Marshal Cagnani abruptly threw his head back and laughed loudly. "_Dalle__ bocche__ di__ bambini__,__eh_? She's right Jacob. Leave the "whys" to the higher-ups to figure out. Our job is target acquisition, not intel analysis."

"Yeah, sure. Unless the reason why is because someone inside the Agency leaked the information."

Jacob's dry retort sliced off Marshal Cagnani's mirth, the other man frowning thoughtfully. "Well if that's the case, then you'll have to deal with that later. For now, like your girl said, our job is to focus on completing the mission." Melanie grinned broadly, feeling a profound upwelling of pride at Marshal Cagnani's agreement and approval. The feeling wasn't quite the same as if the praise had come from Jacob, but to have her opinions vindicated by a professional soldier of Marshal Cagnani's calibre was still rewarding nonetheless.

Exiting the cabin, the trio made their way quickly to the north end of the valley, collecting the commandos patrolling the area as they did so. Once there, Marshal Cagnani called everyone together and explained the situation. "We're only about six kilometres from the border and they're going to be pushing hard to reach it. Tracking them shouldn't be too hard. I can't imagine they would have just left four bodies to rot if they thought they might be followed."

"And what do we do if they reach the border before we catch up to them?" one of the other commandos asked.

"What do you mean, "What do we do?" We keep pursuing them," Jacob barked, glaring at the man as if he had just asked the dumbest question in the world.

"We can't chase them across the border into Switzerland; we don't have jurisdiction there," the man retorted sharply.

Jacob's face twisted into a contemptuous sneer as he replied, voice dripping with derision. "What, scared you'll get in trouble? You're black ops, for Christ's sake; there's no such thing as jurisdictional boundaries for us. Now smarten up and grow a pair."

The man's face instantly darkened in rising anger at the insult. His body tensed, his hands tightening into fists at his sides. His two companions to either side did the same, one of them taking a half-step forward before catching himself.

Melanie noted all of this in an instant, her body suddenly deathly still as every muscle coiled up in anticipation. Her hand slowly drifted to the hilt of her knife, surreptitiously loosening it in its sheath. She darted quick looks back and forth between Jacob and the commando, eyes narrowed to thin slits. Time seemed to slow for her as her mind slipped into full combat mode and she began to plot out the quickest means of killing the three men. The one in the middle, the one whose angry gaze was locked with Jacob's, would die first; a quick, simple stab to the right eye socket to drop him immediately. A hard shove as she withdrew her knife would send his corpse toppling into the man on his left, fouling him and delaying his response.

A low kick to shatter the knee or femur of the man closest to Melanie would drop him and then a backhanded slash across the throat to finish him. After that, the final man could be dispatched either by a disembowelling strike, just below the edge of his body armour, or by another rapid stab to the eyes or throat. Fast. Easy. She could do it. All she need was Jacob's signal and she would pounce and…

All at once, Marshal Cagnani was between the two men, arms out to push them back, away from each other. "Alright now, everybody just calm the fuck down!" he barked harshly, turning a withering glare on the commandos. The trio relaxed marginally, looking slightly chastened if no less angry. Marshal Cagnani then turned his glare on Jacob, how stared back at him coldly. "That was out of line, Jacob. What the Hell is wrong with you?"

"I want those couriers Luciano," Jacob growled. "Their asses are _mine_. I'm going to run them down and bring them in if Melanie and I have to go after them alone."

"You know damn well that it won't come to that. You just need to relax and take a breath. And for God's sake, tell Melanie to relax as well, before she snaps and kills someone."

For the first time, everyone seemed to notice her standing there, her entire body like a coiled spring ready to explode at the slightest touch. She had a white-knuckled death grip on her knife and in her eyes was the cold, hungry stare of a predator. The three commandos' faces blanched at the sight of her unwavering, unblinking gaze, suddenly realizing just how close they were to death.

"Jesus Christ, Melanie, stand down!" Jacob snapped, suddenly frantic. At his command, all of the tension left Melanie's body in a single rush. Her hand fell away from the knife, once again relaxed at her side. She blinked owlishly, life and warmth quickly returning to her expression.

"That's better," Marshal Cagnani drawled, stepping back and passing a scathing glare around at everyone. "Now then, if everyone is through wanting to slit each others' throats, perhaps we can all get back to the reason we're out here. You know: the mission?" Everyone feeling suitably chastened, they got down to the task of hammering out their strategy.

The plan of attack ended up being essentially the same as before: a flanking force would range ahead to circle around and cut off the fleeing assassins, with the remainder of the commandos following behind to drive them into the ambush. The only change of note was that, this time, Melanie was to be a part of the ambushing force, rather than the pursuant one. She felt more than a little anxious about the idea of heading into combat while separated from Jacob but as he pointed out to her firmly, it was best if she play to her greatest strength, which was as a sniper. With supreme reluctance, she grudgingly agreed with his assessment. And so, minutes later, Melanie was loping along at a swift, ground-eating pace next to Angelo.

As Marshal Cagnani had predicted, the German hit-men's trail had been extremely easy to follow. Between their unconcerned, lacklustre pace and the rain weighing down the grass where they had passed, Melanie felt that even a blind person could have successfully tracked them. Despite the two hours' head-start the assassins had had, Melanie and the commandos were able to catch up to and then pass them with relative ease.

Ghosting through the trees, slipping soundlessly between bushes and across the constant rise and fall of the terrain, they made their way across the rim of a deep, narrow valley. A dozen metres to her right, the ground dropped away sharply into a sheer, rocky wall that fell some fifty or sixty feet to the valley's floor. The valley's opposite slope was much more gradual in its incline, the thick tree-cover broken in places by twisting patches of open, verdant fields. A short ways ahead, an up-thrust projection of rock jutted out sharply, providing a perfect vantage point from which they could look out across the entire valley below.

Passing her rifle over to Angelo, Melanie scrambled up onto the promontory, reaching down to help haul him up afterwards. Looking out, she could just see the tiny forms of the other commandos as they positioned themselves strategically across the valley. From high above, Melanie and Angelo would direct their movements as the assassins neared in order to co-ordinate the ambush.

The next few minutes were spent in silence as the pair worked on setting up their firing position. Melanie assembled her rifle, laying out on the folded out, padded bag while Angelo assembled and began calibrating his spotting scope. Counting out rounds of 7.62mm NATO ammunition, she began feeding them into a trio of nine-round box magazines, one of which she slapped home into the rifle. It was slightly excessive, given that if everything went as planned, she wouldn't be firing a single shot. Leaning down, she peered through the telescopic scope, twisting the various adjustment knobs to fine-tune her aiming point as Angelo listed off numbers for wind speed, elevation and other variables.

Just as she was finishing up, Marshal Cagnani's voice crackled suddenly in her ear, soft and low. "All teams check in."

"Advance team one in position; standing by," Raphael replied from where he and his fellow commandos waited in the valley below. He was closely echoed by the other two teams of commandos, each reporting that they were in position and ready.

Keying his earpiece, Angelo spoke softly, all trace of the boisterous, easy-going young man wiped away, buried beneath the mask of the cold, ruthless professional. "Overwatch team in position; standing by." As Angelo was speaking, Melanie slid one arm underneath the rifle to help hug its stock tight to the hollow of her shoulder. Pulling back the arming hammer, she listened with grim satisfaction to the sound of the first round cycling into the chamber. Her hand curled around the rifle's grip, index finger resting lightly against the trigger guard.

"Remember, your director wants them brought in alive so if you end up having to shoot, shoot to disable; not to kill."

"Understood," Melanie said tonelessly in reply to Angelo's softly whispered caution. Frankly though, it didn't matter to her one bit what Director Lorenzo wanted. Jacob had said that he wanted these men brought in alive, so if that's what _he_ wanted, then she would make sure it happened.

Laying on the ground, face resting against the rifle's cheek guard, Melanie waited, motionless. The incessant rain grew steadily worse, flakes of snow beginning to mix in with the water droplets. She barely noticed the chill seeping through her flesh as the rain and snow began soaking through her clothes. It was a minor irritant, unimportant and irrelevant to her mission.

Melanie's eyebrows twitched faintly as she caught sight of movement from the far end of the valley. The movement resolved itself into four men, all bundled up in heavy coats and wool tuques against the wet and cold. Through the twenty times magnification of her high-powered scope, she could see that three of the men carried sub-machine guns, slung low against the rain. The fourth man, obviously the leader of the group, looked to have an assault rifle slung across his shoulder. "Visual contact with targets is confirmed. I repeat, visual contact with targets is confirmed."

Roughly a kilometre of patchwork landscape separated the assassins from the hidden commandos. Keeping her scope trained on the four men, she and Angelo directed the ambush teams into place, arraying them in a broad arc across the couriers' path.

Melanie could hear Angelo's heart beating inside his chest, his pulse beginning to race as the assassins drew ever nearer. Only one final stretch of open field separated the two groups. They would wait until the four men were out into the middle of the exposed terrain before springing the trap, the commandos stepping out from the trees on three sides. At that moment, Jacob and Marshal Cagnani, along with the remainder of the commandos, were sprinting to close the gap. If the assassins tried to turn and flee back the way they had come, they would find themselves almost immediately boxed in.

The four men re-emerged into view, still in their loose cluster. With heads tucked low and shoulders hunched, they ambled across the clearing, heedless of their surroundings. Each of the men appeared focused solely on their own discomfort, their attentions all on reaching the comparatively dry shelter of the next stand of trees.

"Overwatch to all assault teams, targets are in position. Move in."

In a single burst of co-ordinated motion, the commandos darted forward. Like deadly wraiths they slipped through the trees with rifles raised and ready. They spread out into a shallow arc as they stepped out into the clearing, the men on the flanks pressing forward slightly to close in the three-sided box. All at once, the commandos let loose with fierce, angry shouts, startling the four men and bringing them to a staggering halt.

Amid overlapping demands that the four men put down their weapons and surrender, a single, piercing gunshot sent a resounding crack thundering through the air. One of the commandos pitched forward, a brief spray of crimson fountaining from his throat. Chaos instantly erupted within the clearing as the remaining commandos bolted back towards the trees. The radio channel became a frenzied cacophony of half-panicked cries.

"Ambush!"

"All teams pull back!"

"Sniper! Sniper!"

"It's a God damned trap!"

We've been set up!"

The assassins, now steely-eyed and completely alert, snapped weapons up to fire into the retreating backs of the commandos, adding cries of pain to the already tangled noise. Three of the commandos spun back to return fire, forcing the four men to pull back as well, one of the four buckling as a round punched a hole through his thigh, high on the outside.

"Motherfuckers were waiting for us!" Angelo hissed venomously as Melanie rapidly focused her aim on a second assassin and squeezed the trigger. The rifle buckled slightly in her hands, the violent jerk absorbed completely into the dense tissue of her synthetic muscles, cyborg-enhanced strength holding the weapon steady and immobile. The bullet tore a path through the air, biting deep into the assassin's shoulder and blowing out through the other side. Blood and bone chips sprayed as the man staggered and spun from the impact, dropping to the ground as his weapon fell from suddenly nerveless hands.

Her gaze never wavering from the lens of the scope, Melanie cycled back the bolt with smooth, mechanical precision, racking the next round. She twitched the barrel of the gun to the side, homing in on her next target. Before she could even begin to squeeze the trigger, however, Angelo thrust out a hand, grabbing the front of her gun and forcing it down, towards the ground.

"Hold your fire!" he growled. "We can't risk giving away our position until we've taken out that sniper team. Marcelo, Raphael and the rest will have to take care of themselves for now."

There was a brief pause as Melanie stared icily into Angelo's own hard gaze. There was a momentary battle of wills as her instincts told her to strike out at this man who was preventing her from doing her job and attacking. But the moment passed and as the wisdom of Angelo's advice sank in, she gave a curt nod, intoning coldly, "Understood." She immediately shifted her aim, swinging the gun around until she could survey the valley's eastern ridgeline. She knew that the shot had come from there and began a methodical scan of the thinly-treed, rocky slopes. There was one spot, almost directly opposite from Melanie and Angelo's position, which overlooked the clearing perfectly. She knew that the enemy sniper team was there; it was just a matter of pinpointing them.

A sudden flash from the opposite ridge pulled Melanie's eye. An instant later, there was a faintly hissing zing accompanied almost immediately by an echoing _CRACK_ as something impacted the shelf of rock, directly beneath Melanie's head. She heard Angelo curse vehemently in alarm. Clearly the enemy sniper had managed to pinpoint their position. However, with that brief muzzle-flash, Melanie had found them as well.

Not bothering to dial in the precise aiming on her scope, Melanie simply took as close of a manual aim as possible and squeezed the trigger. She waited, not breathing, for the half-second it took the bullet to streak across to the other side of the valley. A tiny plume of dust and misting water puffed up where the bullet slammed into the rock-face three feet too low and slightly left of the enemy.

Melanie's hand was a blur of motion as she rapidly cycled the bolt, racking the next round. With the faintest of twitches, she adjusted her aim and fired, pausing only long enough to see where the round landed before again cycling the bolt with blistering speed. The second round hit the rocks less than a hand span away, the third taking the enemy sniper dead-center in his forehead. Cycling the bolt one final time, Melanie adjusted her aim by the faintest of margins and fired, the bullet tearing a bloody path through the enemy spotter's throat, killing him instantly as it shredded every artery in his neck and blew out his spinal column.

"Nice shots," Angelo murmured, whistling appreciatively. "Now we need to get the Hell out of here. Even with that sniper team dead, our firing position has still been compromised; they might have a second team or reinforcements sneaking up on us." He began packing up his spotter scope as he talked, preparing to move out.

Melanie wanted to tell him that she couldn't move, to explain to him about the special "sniper mode" that she had been engineered with. She wanted to tell him that it would probably be a good two minutes before the paralysis wore off and she would be able to move freely again. Unfortunately, at that moment, a stream of bullets slammed into Angelo's chest, staggering him. His ballistic vest absorbed most of the impact force, keeping the shots from being instantly lethal. One of the rounds did manage to catch him in the arm, however, dragging a pained grunt from the hardened commando. A second round of burst-fire took him high in the chest and he staggered back a step.

Having twisted her face around as best as the full-body numbness would allow at the sound of the first volley of shots, Melanie had a clear view as Angelo's foot slipped out from under him on the water- and ice-coated rock. In seeming slow motion, he toppled backwards, arms wheeling. There was a look of shock and disbelief on his face as he fell over the promontory's edge. Unable to do more than twitch weakly, Melanie could only watch, horrified, as Angelo dropped away, falling the over one hundred feet to the valley floor. She could only watch as he hit the ground flat on his back, the dull thud slowly drifting up to her.

Hot, bitter tears filled Melanie's eyes, the shock of Angelo's sudden death tearing her out of her Conditioning-induced composure. She could dimly hear someone shouting up to her from immediately below the promontory, but their words didn't register in her frozen mind. All that mattered to her was the sight of Angelo's unmoving body splayed out on the rocky soil far below.

Something scrambled up the rocks behind her and Melanie became suddenly aware of a voice growling at her in the harsh, guttural tones of German from directly above. Twisting her head to the side, still unable to do much more than wriggle around limply, she saw a hard-faced man standing over her, his dark eyes glaring from a blocky, pock-marked face, dark hair shaved close to his scalp. He had a high-powered assault rifle clutched tightly in his hands, the barrel levelled directly at her head.

Seeing the tiny light of fear in Melanie's eyes, her body still refusing to respond, the man pulled back slightly, sudden realization dawning in his craggy face. Kicking out viciously, he knocked the rifle from Melanie's hands, sending it tumbling through the air, over the edge of the cliff. Now unarmed and helpless, Melanie felt the seed of fear blossom into full-blown panic.

Someone called up to the man from below and he answered, chuckling nastily. They were still speaking German and while she couldn't understand their words, she could very clearly understand the sinister, lust-filled tone of their voices.

Grinning lecherously, the man shouldered his rifle, reaching out with one hand as he slowly knelt down next to her. A primal, animalistic terror took hold of her mind and Melanie desperately screamed at herself, willing her body to move. The ghosts of hidden memories churned just beneath the surface of her subconscious and the sound of evil, malicious laughter washed over her, drowning out all other noise. Retreating into herself, she could see shadowy forms swirling all about her, clawed hands reaching, tearing at her flesh, pulling on her limbs. Pain, deep and sharp, filled her but every time she opened her mouth to scream, something poured in, choking off the sound and smothering her.

Panic and terror filled every fibre of her being as the man tore away Melanie's ghillie cape, tossing it aside contemptuously. He then planted a booted foot between her shoulder blades, his one hand descending to rub and grope obscenely at her rear-end. She began to gibber silently, her chest heaving in short, frantic gasps. _Oh__ God,__please,__not__ again;__ No, __no, __no, __no, __no! __I __have __to __move; __have __to __escape. __Why __won__'__t __my __body __move? __What__'__s __wrong __with __me?__ I __can__'__t __let __this __happen; __I __need __to __move.__Move, __damn __you, __move! __Why __won__'__t __you __move?__ I__ need __to __move; __now! __Move. __Move! __MOVE!_

Something snapped inside of her and all at once, Melanie felt herself being filled with power and strength. A strange calmness descended upon her, silencing the fear and stilling the terrified trembling that had, up until that moment, been wracking her body. The man squatting above her pulled his hand back, clearly sensing the change within her. Before he could react, however, Melanie flipped herself over, onto her back and with a growling snarl twisting her face, kicked up, hard, straight between his legs. She felt the crunch and pop of bone and cartilage beneath her shin and the man's eyes widened, his mouth falling open. A strangled gurgling was the only noise that managed to slip past his gaping lips. His rifle falling from suddenly nerveless fingers, the man dropped his hands to weakly grip his ruined genitals, slowly collapsing to the ground.

Not waiting for him to finish falling, Melanie Pulled back both legs, curling herself up before lashing out in a single, explosive surge of motion. Both booted feet slammed into the center of his chest, shattering ribs as she hurled him backwards, his body flying over the promontory's edge and crashing to the ground amidst his suddenly shouting comrades.

Rolling to her feet, Melanie reached down to her waist and withdrew Jacob's hunting knife. Crouched low, she braced herself against the rock, the muscles in her legs and arms tightening like a coiled spring. Then, moving so fast that she blurred, Melanie launched herself forward, into the air. She saw the two men below, still staring at their friend's limp body. Blood was frothing at the corners of his mouth from both punctured and shredded lungs, his eyes wide and staring. One of the men slowly began to turn, too late, as she hurled down towards him.

Her knees ploughed into his midriff, crushing vital organs and punching all of the air from his lungs. At the same time, Melanie reached out, the fingers of one hand digging deep into both eye sockets, twisting to pull his head to one side as her other hand flashed down, slamming the knife into his neck. Blood instantly spurted in a forceful, violent stream as the blade sheared clean through both the carotid and jugular arteries. The man pitched backwards, all strength draining from him. Melanie followed him to the ground, keeping her knife buried in his throat. As he hit, she pitched forward, tucking her shoulder and rolling smoothly back to her feet. The third man, momentarily stunned from the brutal attack, managed to recover enough to swing his rifle towards her.

Too late, as it turned out, as Melanie was already dashing forward. Her empty hand snapped to the side, knocking the man's rifle up and aside. His stomach exposed, she thrust out her other hand, twisting up and under the hem of his ballistic vest. Hot fluids gushed over her hand as the knife sank deep into the man's belly, a savage flick of her wrist disembowelling him.

Ripping the blade free, Melanie side-stepped lightly, her free hand gripping him by the wrist and pulling him sharply forward. Weakened by the mortal wound and now unbalanced, the man toppled forward. Melanie spun as he fell, blade flashing down to deliver a second vicious blow to the base of his neck, severing the spinal cord and killing him instantly. Letting the corpse slide off of the knife and fall to the ground, Melanie gave the knife a hard flick, casting off the excess blood slicking its surface. Behind her, the first man's feeble, gurgling cries had finally gone silent; the flow of blood leaking down his chin slowing and stopping as his eyes began to glaze over in death.

For a time then, Melanie stood there silently, listening to the rushing roar of blood pounding through her veins. Adrenaline surged in pulsing waves, making her body quiver and tremble with pent-up energy. She could hear the sounds of gunfire from the valley below, the muted barks of men shouting back and forth.

A faint popping sound made Melanie turn slightly, an instant before something small and hard slammed into her arm and side in a rapid succession of blows, staggering her back a step. Spinning to the South, towards the large stand of trees that forested the low slope, she saw a sudden flash and was rocked back as a second volley of bullets hit her full in the chest. A third, forth and fifth volley hammered at her, driving her back several more steps. Several bullets found their marks in her arm and legs, setting off tiny flares of pain that quickly faded to an irritating itch.

Blinking dazedly, Melanie wavered slightly on her feet, trying to take stock of what had just happened. _I__ think __I__'__ve __just __been __shot_, she muttered to herself confusedly._Somebody __shot __me.__ Some __cowardly __little _laisjeq _was __hiding __in __the __trees __and __just _shot _me!__ I _hate _getting __shot!_

With a hissing growl of rage, Melanie sprinted towards the trees, knowing that the man would still be busy reloading. Fire blazed in her eyes as, still some fifteen feet away from the tree line, she leapt into the air, body sailing in a smooth, high arc. Twisting about as she fell, Melanie lashed out with one foot in a decapitating round-house kick. Unfortunately, the man who had been hiding there had taken the opportunity to retreat and her blow only served to shatter the waist-thick trunk of a tree, the air suddenly filled with the sounds of snapping branches as the tree toppled and crashed to the ground.

Growling low in the back of her throat, a vicious grin slowly spread across Melanie's face. She _loved_ it when her prey chose to run. It was always more fun when she got to hunt them down first.

Straightening, Melanie sniffed, tasting the air for signs of her prey's scent. She caught it easily, the air reeking of his panicky fear. Glancing about, she could see the residual trail of his body-heat disappearing deeper into the undergrowth. _This__ is __almost __going __to __be _too _easy,_ she chuckled silently, sheathing her knife as she darted off after him.

Moving swiftly through the trees, Melanie quickly caught up to the fleeing man, stalking him silently. His rampant, cloying fear was clearly evident in the way he spun about erratically, sweeping his rifle back and forth, searching for her. She smiled thinly as she peered out from behind a low bush, the muzzle passing directly across her, less than six feet away. It would have been stupidly simple and easy to lunge forward then, blade flashing as she took him in the throat. A half-trained whelp could have killed him without difficulty. But then the hunt, and her fun, would be over. And Melanie wasn't ready to end the hunt just yet.

Reaching down, she picked up a rock and, with casual ease, tossed it out to one side. The rock flew through the air, rustling the leaves and branches of several bushes a dozen-or-so feet away. Instantly the man reacted, flicking his rifle towards the noise and letting off a triple burst of ammunition. Pausing to listen, he cocked his head to one side as he strained to hear anything in response to his attack. When only silence met him, he turned and ran.

Melanie followed him with her eyes, teeth flashing as she grinned wickedly. _Round__ two_.

This time, rather than pursue her prey on the ground, Melanie clambered up the trunk of a large, rough-barked tree, pulling herself into its upper branches. Gazing down upon the forest floor, she could see the bushes shaking and waving as the man forced his way through. If he was smart, he should have stopped moving, doubling back to make his way slowly through the trees until he was downwind of her, eliminating two of her methods of tracking. But then, panicky prey rarely acting with any level of intelligence.

Looking across the intervening gap, Melanie picked out another branch that she gauged to be strong enough to hold her. Then, crouching low, she sprang forward, leaping the distance and landing lightly on the balls of her feet. Jumping from branch to branch, she followed her prey. Occasionally, whenever he started to near the edge of the forest, she would break off a small branch and toss it down, ahead of him. Invariably he would stop, fire off another volley of bullets and then turn, running back, deeper into the woods.

Melanie's body shook with silent, gleeful laughter as she continued to taunt and play with the man, turning him aside again and again to keep him running in helpless circles. Finally though, he began to tire. She could see him beginning to lag, his breath coming in panting gasps. He started to lean up against trees whenever he paused, wiping a hand across his sweat-slicked brow. I was time to end this.

Letting the man stagger forward, Melanie leapt to a branch directly above him. Then, as he was passing by below, she allowed herself to slowly fall forward, kicking off from the branch to streak down, towards the ground. Silent as death she descended, the man not even turning as she hit him from behind. With a hissing growl of triumph, Melanie wrapped her legs around his waist, locking her ankles and squeezing with crushing force. Her one hand she slipped over his arm, wrenching it back violently and listening to the satisfying crunch and pop of his shoulder dislocating. Her other arm she snaked around his head, snarling her fingers in his hair and pulling his head back sharply. Dipping her head down, she paused long enough to inhale deeply through her nose, drinking in the pungent aroma of his fear. Then, jaws opening wide, she sank her teeth into his throat, biting down with crushing, killing force.

Skin tore and cartilage crunched as she bore down on her prey, his gurgling scream the sweetest of music dancing in her ears. Blood filled Melanie's mouth as her fangs ripped through the arteries, the hot, sticky spray washing all across her face and chest. She felt the shivering impact through her elbows and knees as he hit the ground, his body twitching and convulsing beneath her.

Each forceful pump of the man's pounding heart sent another plume of blood spraying into Melanie's face, drenching her down to the waist and painting her crimson. Her hair was a matted sheet of clotting gore. She could feel the grisly fluid soaking through her clothes, wetting her skin.

Counting off the seconds slowly, Melanie remained there, unmoving, her jaws locked in a lethal vice-grip around the man's throat as his feeble kicking and twitching slowed, weakened and finally stopped. Only then did she pull her head back, tearing out a large, bloody gobbet of flesh that she let slide down her throat. Sighing in contentment, she licked her lips, uncoiling herself from around the man's cooling body. Regaining her feet, she ran one blood-soaked hand down her equally soaked face, serving only to further spread and smear the gore.

As she stood in the sudden silent stillness of the forest, calmness returned to her mind, the savage blood-lust that had consumed her fading. The crackling emerald fire slowly faded from her eyes, the barbaric fury replaced with sudden bewilderment and confusion. _What__…__what__ the __Hell __just __happened?_ she wondered, eyes darting about. _Why __am __I __all __sticky __and __hot?_ Her eyes fell upon the mangled corpse at her feet, gasping as the sight of his throat, which looked as if it had been torn out by a wolf or some other forest predator.

Taking a nervous, anxious step backwards, Melanie reached up with one hand to wipe away the sweat that was trickling down her forehead, cheeks and chin. That hand came away red and she recoiled sharply, staring at it in disbelief. She started to reach up with her other hand until she saw that it too was bathed in red. Flexing her fingers experimentally, she felt the fluid coating them stick and pull. _Blood.__My __hands __are __covered __in __blood.__Why __are __my __hands __covered __in __blood?_

Glancing down at herself, Melanie let loose a half-strangled cry. Her entire front was awash in slowly drying blood, from her neck down to her thighs. Suddenly she could feel the blood soaking through her clothes, gluing her shirt to her chest and stomach. She could feel it seeping down her legs, feel it plastering her hair to her head.

Swallowing in suddenly anxious fear, Melanie nearly gagged at the overwhelming coppery taste. She spat forcefully, staring in revulsion at the crimson spittle that splattered on the ground. With slowly sinking realization, her eyes were drawn back to the dead man, to the almost fist-sized hole in his throat. _Like__ it __had __been __torn __out __by __a __wild __animal,_ she thought. _Or __some_one _acting __like __a __wild __animal._

She staggered back a step as the memories suddenly slammed home within her. She clapped both hands to her mouth, stifling the horrified scream that erupted. She could see herself stalking the man through the woods, running him down until he was too tired and weak to fight; could once again feel her teeth clamping down on his throat, crushing and tearing. Melanie spun, sinking to her hands and knees as she retched violently, her entire body clenching as she emptied her stomach. _Oh __God,__ what __have __I __done?__What__ is _wrong _with __me?_ Killing she could deal with; it was what she had been built for. She was a soldier, an assassin; killing enemies was her job, her entire purpose of being. But this was more than simple killing. This wasn't the clean, composed elimination of a target marked for death. This was something savage, inhuman. And she had done it. The messy, gaping wounds on the corpse at her feet hadn't been inflicted by a soldier or an assassin; they had been inflicted by an animal; a monster.

"Melanie, where are you? Check in."

The sudden sound of Jacob's barking voice shattered Melanie's fugue and she twitched, glancing about wildly until she remembered about her earpiece.

"Melanie, check in; what the Hell is going on up there?"

Suddenly frantic, her chest heaving, Melanie tore the earpiece out and crushed it in one hand. She knew that she was panicking, that she should be following her handler's orders and letting him know where she was, but all she could think about was the mangled corpse and the blood covering her. She couldn't let Jacob see her like this, couldn't let him know what a monster she had become. She had to get clean, had to somehow wash off all of the blood. She had wash herself off; remove all trace of what she had done. Closing her eyes, she pulled up a remembered image of the map, recalling the layout of the terrain. According to the map, there was a small river nearby. The river had carved out the valley she now stood in millennia ago, before its course was diverted to the west by a rockslide sometime in the past.

Her mind made up, Melanie started forward, pausing to sling the limp body over her shoulder. She couldn't let Jacob or any of the commandos find the body, couldn't let them see where her teeth had torn out his throat. Then, staggering slightly under the unwieldy weight of the corpse, she made her way deeper into the mountains, in search of the river.


End file.
